Reflections on Budget Systems

Several prominent budget systems of past years, such as the Planning Programming Budget System and Zero-Base Budgeting, are no longer popular as comprehensive systems, each system has had a continuing effect on current practices. This article comments on the usefulness of several features of budget systems particularly from a management perspective. It also offers several criteria for design of budget systems which, it is hoped, would help prevent some of the problems that have been encountered in the past.