Whoever came up with the system “if you don’t allocate all of your yearly budget, your budget will be smaller next year” is responsible for so much human misery and wasted money
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Whoever came up with the system “if you don’t allocate all of your yearly budget, your budget will be smaller next year” is responsible for so much human misery and wasted money
Invest the surplus and use it 2 years later.
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Whoever came up with the system “if you don’t allocate all of your yearly budget, your budget will be smaller next year” is responsible for so much human misery and wasted money
@sidereal I first witnessed this when I was working in the National Health Service on a student placement during my degree. March arrived and we suddenly had to spend loads of money on things we didn't need "or we wouldn't get it next year".
It seemed wrong then and it seems wrong now.
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Whoever came up with the system “if you don’t allocate all of your yearly budget, your budget will be smaller next year” is responsible for so much human misery and wasted money
@sidereal I used to work at an online shop who also supplied public institutions such as schools, universities and even police (for non critical tech at least).
And the end of the year was always wild. Like police stations calling to order stuff literally like "we have 14.000€ to spend and there's a world cup next year, can you recommend a projector?" 🫠
Next thing you hear is "there is no money to [insert ridiculous things not to spend money on] left.". Like no money for soap and toilet paper in public schools...
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I was do relieved when HMT agreed we should use accruals accounting.
Before that, if I commisioned work that ended after the last week in March they'd take the money off my budget even though I owed it.
We'd contact everyone asking them to send their invoices in early.@tiggy @sidereal
Lord yes. The public library service I used to work for spent 40% of the book fund in March and accessioned 40% of the stock in April. (There was 40% to be spent every year because it wasn't until the beginning of December every year they could be sure they were allowed to spend any of it.) -
@lionelb IDK if accountants are responsible for this one!
They're not. Source: My mom (now retired) used be an accountant her whole working life.
It was one of her recurrent complaints (still is).
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You are right. I should have said accountancy practice.
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Whoever came up with the system “if you don’t allocate all of your yearly budget, your budget will be smaller next year” is responsible for so much human misery and wasted money
Used to see it at my job. Purchasing and accounting people hated the year end craziness
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Whoever came up with the system “if you don’t allocate all of your yearly budget, your budget will be smaller next year” is responsible for so much human misery and wasted money
@sidereal That's why "efficiency schemes" exist in the regulation of monopolies. If a utility underspends it gets to keep a fraction of it, but remainder is returned to customers through reduced costs. One example used for energy in Australia:
https://www.aer.gov.au/industry/registers/resources/schemes/capital-expenditure-sharing-scheme-cessPublic service use it or lose it approach is a wasteful ratchet, and "productivity dividends" are blunt instruments for clawback.
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At a university I once worked at the chemistry department had a store where professors could go buy platinum on the last day of their funding cycle, hold it in their lab, and then return it for a refund into their account at the beginning of their next cycle.
@BE @sidereal @shansterable that's an amazing way to launder fiscal year funds into zero year funds
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Whoever came up with the system “if you don’t allocate all of your yearly budget, your budget will be smaller next year” is responsible for so much human misery and wasted money
@sidereal When I worked at for a city owned theatre this logic existed when working with the city for our yearly budget. One year the executive producer took it further. Not just max out the budget but exceed the budget so that in the following year, it would be clear to the budgeters we would need more money.
We produced some incredible work that season but IIRC we were like ~1 million dollars over budget. The EP resigned rather than go through an investigation and our budget was cut the following season.
The interim between leaders was really excellent though because it was basically the people who ran the theatre making all the decisions. Closest few months I've ever been to a worker ran environment. -
@jonatin IDK if the solution here is kickbacks! But maybe I’m wrong
@sidereal yeah, I get that, I’m mostly just imagining what a totally different incentive would have wrought. Less waste, I’d hope, but within consumerism we’d probably just shift the cycle to even more churn through household and personal items.
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Whoever came up with the system “if you don’t allocate all of your yearly budget, your budget will be smaller next year” is responsible for so much human misery and wasted money
@sidereal In my council money could be carried forward if there was a good reason (typically projects that didn't meet their worst case (budget-wise!) timescales).
Anyone caught wasting money towards the end of the year just because it was left in their budget would have been dealt with.
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@sidereal In my council money could be carried forward if there was a good reason (typically projects that didn't meet their worst case (budget-wise!) timescales).
Anyone caught wasting money towards the end of the year just because it was left in their budget would have been dealt with.
@sidereal Oh, there was one example though.
We put in a £250,000 budget line for "planning appeal legal costs" because we suspected a particularly developer was going to play silly buggers over a particular project, and we wanted to indicate that we were ready and willing to fight.
Having spotted this, the developer chose not to play silly buggers, so this budget line was removed the next year, having not been spent and no longer being needed.
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Whoever came up with the system “if you don’t allocate all of your yearly budget, your budget will be smaller next year” is responsible for so much human misery and wasted money
@sidereal I have never seen any sense in that
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Whoever came up with the system “if you don’t allocate all of your yearly budget, your budget will be smaller next year” is responsible for so much human misery and wasted money
When I joined the uni, I was told that my goal was to slightly overspend the budget, & never, ever, underspend.
As others have said, responsible budgeting was punished by reducing funding. Irresponsible budgeters received increases. Obviously, they hadn't been given enough...
Of course, as a former public servant, I was very familiar with the practice.
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Whoever came up with the system “if you don’t allocate all of your yearly budget, your budget will be smaller next year” is responsible for so much human misery and wasted money
@sidereal My favourite rule was "We're increasing our fees by 3% next year."
Me: "Why? We have a surplus."
President: "Because we have to make increases in line with inflation."
Me: "Even though we don't need them?"
Pres: "Yes, so that we can go a year without increasing them."
Me: "We can not increase them this year."
Pres: "That's not what I'm talking about."
That was in the mid 2010's.
Then COVID happened. And they didn't increase fees for almost three years, and it was a relatively minor hit, and they survived the pandemic, as did most of their clients.
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@nomdeb congress is the opposite of progress am i right guys
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When I joined the uni, I was told that my goal was to slightly overspend the budget, & never, ever, underspend.
As others have said, responsible budgeting was punished by reducing funding. Irresponsible budgeters received increases. Obviously, they hadn't been given enough...
Of course, as a former public servant, I was very familiar with the practice.
This is so true and factual. Took a while as a staff status to be informed between OCO (outgoing capital outlay) and NOCO (non capital outlay) funding accounts and why they matter to spending in departments across the uni.
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Efficiency fetishism has a lot to answer for.
@johnzajac @sidereal There is such a thing as too much efficiency. There is such a thing as "enough". Endless economic growth is a fiction. Imagine if we all strived for endless personal growth instead.
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@johnzajac @sidereal There is such a thing as too much efficiency. There is such a thing as "enough". Endless economic growth is a fiction. Imagine if we all strived for endless personal growth instead.
