Budgets for internal departmental costs: mechanics and other aspects

To my earlier post on internal budget components (See my post of Sept. 9, 2008: budget elements.), I have added other posts that consider the mechanics and timing of law department budgets (See my post of May 30, 2005: accounts outside the normal budget; Sept. 27, 2005: outside counsel budget variance year to year; Oct. 14, 2005: allocating budget cuts to divisions; Oct. 20, 2005: budgets should extend to practice groups; Nov. 25, 2005: top down or bottom up; March 9, 2007: rolling forecasts; July 16, 2007: zero-based budgets; and Jan. 25, 2006: lead time for submission of budgets.).

Your financial group needs to understand your budget, especially accruals (See my post of Oct.1, 2006: keep executives and CFO advised; Aug. 24, 2005: accruals; Sept. 17, 2005 #4: accruals; Jan. 27, 2006: internal budgets and client satisfaction; and Nov. 13, 2007: procurement’s involvement at Dell with legal budgets.).

The specific budgets of a few legal departments or groups found there way into this blog (See my post of Nov. 24, 2005: Florida’s Department of Legal Affairs and its $135 million budget; March 28, 2006: EMC’s operating budget of $25 million; May 3, 2006: UPS and estimates of budget; Nov. 2, 2006: budget to actual metrics; April 13, 2007: dashboards to display budget information; and Dec. 10, 2007: and Gates Foundation internal budget of $2.1 million.).

Survey data about attitudes toward internal budgets appear here and there on this blog (See my post of June 30, 2006: budgets of Australian and New Zealand departments; May 10, 2006: Canadian respondents on key issues; Dec. 9, 2005: ADR-favoring law departments; April 12, 2006: in-house lawyers dislike managing budgets; May 29, 2008: managing a budget as morale buster; and May 9, 2007: ranking of budgets among key issues of European legal teams.).