Budgets are most useful when they are coordinated with and communicated to the people who are making decisions. You want department heads and other selected staff to be able to view and report on their own budgets, drilling down into the details where necessary. You may also want department heads and others to enter their desired budget figures for the following year, to dramatically reduce your effort in collecting and entering detailed budget data. And you want to coordinate and compare all of this with past budgets and data on revenues and expenditures from your general ledger.