Manage budgets in the creative industries
Overview
This Standard is about monitoring the budget against a plan.
It includes assessing the implications of any necessary re-allocations or re-distributions of the budget and keeping relevant people informed of changes. Budgets may be internal or external to the organisation.
Performance criteria
You must be able to:
1 monitor and
manage budgets to ensure that resources are being used according to agreed
budget plans
2 ensure that full details of the
administration, control and spending of budgets are made available to
appropriate people
3 identify and record potential problems and
circumstances that could affect budget plans
4 identify and consider additional resources
that could potentially be required and their implications on budgets
5 identify the causes of any significant
variances between what was budgeted and what actually happened and take prompt
corrective action
6 propose revisions to budgets, if necessary,
in response to variances and/or significant or unforeseen developments
7 obtain agreement from the relevant people
about changes to budget allocations
8 use information from budget monitoring and control to
assist in the preparation of future budgets
Knowledge and Understanding
You need to know and understand:
1 the creative objectives for the work and how they impact on business objectives
2 the agreed budget, how it is allocated to cover the different activities and resource requirements and how much it can be changed without approval
3 the relationship between the budget and the schedule
4 how to use a budget to actively monitor and control performance
5 how to give clear instructions and timescales when requiring others to carry out actions relevant to managing budgets
6 the main causes of variances and how to identify them
7 the different types of corrective action that could be taken to address identified variances
8 how unforeseen developments can affect a budget and how to deal with them
9 who to keep informed about circumstances that could affect budgets
10 how to negotiate, agree and record changes to budgets
11 who needs to agree revisions to budgets
12 who needs to be kept informed about performance against budget and changes to budget
13 the importance of using the implementation of the
budget to identify information and lessons for the
preparation of future budgets