What is the first thought you have, when you see the above topic which I am going to discuss with you? Sounds confusing? How is it possible to have cost control yet have business initiatives and without the operations getting hurt? You are not alone if you believe so. 
 

Traditional budgeting process normally starts with forecasting sales levels, cost of goods sold then all operation expenses until reaching to the proforma income statement without understanding how changes in costs (both variable and fixed) & sales will affect profits in future periods. But modern FP&A professionals started to implement CVP analysis during the annual profit plan to study the interaction of sales with variable & fixed costs on the profits received.

Although Beyond Budgeting is about so much more than just budgets, our name tends to draw people, at least initially, towards the budget word. Once there, cost management often pops up as the number one issue, for obvious reasons. How can we manage cost without a budget?

“Control” is an interesting word in the management vocabulary. It is a word many managers struggle with defining. Beyond “cost control”, most are quite vague when it comes to other definitions.

This article will emphasize that ZBB is not exclusively for small businesses. It discusses zero-based budgeting as a tool that can be used to improve a company's understanding of is processes, risks, and opportunities and does not need to be applied to every line or department impacted in the budget.

​The concept of Zero Based Budgeting (ZBB) is by no means new. It has been around for almost 50 years and has been used by many commercial and non-commercial organisations whose overriding objectives are to shed the unnecessary expenses.