The previous controller or budgeting will interface with the planning system and will be realized in the budget predisposition. Through this strument the working objectives are as follows:

Information:

• Can be measured, with the definition of indicators and a target (or goal), namely a value that the indicator must assume in order to be able to say that the objective has been achieved;
• Will be accompanied by resource expectations (human, financial etc…) necessary for attainment, measured in monetary terms and in precise cost terms;
• Will be assigned together with the resources, the person responsible for an attainment which are called responsibility centres.

The indicators can be:

• Effective: when they can be expressed as a relation between an achieved result and a set objective;
• Efficiency: when they can be expressed as a relation between an achieved result and the resources used to obtain it, expressed in terms of cost (when the resources are expressed in terms of material quantity there are productivity indicators, usually considered not appropriate for management control).
  
  

Often the budget elements are established by mutual consent between the manager of the responsibility centre and top management (or its highest manager), according to the logic of the management by objectives (MbO).

In this way the budget becomes a sort of contract between the manager and the proposed centre of responsibility on the basis of the first who undertakes to gain the planned objectives and the second one who gives him the indicated resources for the budget.

The following budgeting phase is the reality control (actual) in respect to the hypothesis (budget) and is called Reporting.