All institutions are required to regularly monitor actual activity to planned activity and control their expenditure to ensure that it is in line with available funds. If required, appropriate corrective action should be taken to resolve significant differences between actual and planned activity. This section gives guidance in the techniques involved and reports available to enable interpretation of actual results against budget at a point in time. The financial jargon for this process of monitoring income and expenditure and taking corrective action is budgetary control.
The methodology for monitoring activity differs depending on whether the activity is one for which a UFS budget is set. Refer to the What budgets do we set in the University? under Budgetary Planning.
- If there is a UFS budget, institutions should review the difference between actual and budgeted expenditure. Significant variances should be resolved.
- If there is no UFS budget, institutions should investigate significant surpluses or deficits. More detail on how to monitor and control activity where there is no budget is given in Monitoring and controlling expenditure against income.