The Importance Of The Budget Process

The budget process can be seen as daunting and tidies when organizations work to adhere to the many codes of financial ethics. From a layman’s perspective the budget allocation process can appear to be logically, simple and straight forward however there must be guidelines in place which organizations can use to guide and judge their fiscal management process. Weak internal controls can potentially worsen the information irregularity between the organization and the stakeholders and other investors by leading to lower quality of accounting and less reliable financial information (Bardhan, Shu, & Shu-Ling, 2015). Many organization implement internal controls to aid in this process. Author Mikesell suggests a few basic steps to implement when addressing internal control factors:

1. Provide qualified personnel, rotate duties, and enforce

Founded in 1695, per the 2014 census, Prince George’s County has a populous of little less than a million residents. The 2014 census reports that Prince George’s County is 66 % black with a median income of about 79k annually making the county one of the most affluent black counties/communities in the United States of America. Although majority Black, Prince Georges County is very diverse with a mixture of other racial makeups: White, Native American, Asian, Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander, Hispanic or Latino to include other unidentified races.

The budget document I will be illuminating on is the approved operating and capital budgets for Prince George’s fiscal year 2015. This document is the projection of expenses and incomes for the forthcoming year to include a detailed breakdown of expense allocation and strategic plans for the county for the county’s 3.43 billion dollar adopted budget. Currently Prince George’s County breaks down their budget in the following:

- General