budget

A budget is a calculation plan, usually but not always financial, for a defined period, often one year or a month. A budget may include anticipated sales volumes and revenues, resource quantities including time, costs and expenses, environmental impacts such as greenhouse gas emissions, other impacts, assets, liabilities and cash flows. Companies, governments, families, and other organizations use budgets to express strategic plans of activities in measurable terms.

Preparing a budget allows companies, authorities, private entities or families to establish priorities and evaluate the achievement of their objectives. To achieve these goals it may be necessary to incur a deficit (expenses exceed income) or, on the contrary, it may be possible to save, in which case the budget will present a surplus (income exceed expenses).