eli5 How do companies spend their exact budget without going too over/under?

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So most companies have a big corporate office and a bunch of regional offices that they allocate money to, I get that. Let’s say a given office gets a $500,000/yr operating budget (just throwing out a random number). How do they spend exactly $500,000? Because they obviously don’t want to go over budget but they don’t want to have a surplus and lose $ next year. So is there wiggle room? Would they spend $499,995 or something?

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Anonymous 0 Comments

They tell all of the people who do the actual work in the company to stop what they’re doing and help the bean counters fudge the books so that the arbitrary numbers match on the arbitrary day that marks the end of the fiscal year.

Not even joking. Just one of the many dysfunctions of a large corporate enterprise. Though it’s actually worse in government because spending is dictated by Congress, so spending $500,000 instead of $500,005 is a matter of law.

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