Prepare operational budgets
Most of the output can be produced by software today.
Software can pull the data, run the comparison and write up what it found. The accuracy depends almost entirely on whether it is wired into the real system of record rather than a stale copy, which is the problem the tools and auth layer exists to solve.
| How automatable | Mostly automatable |
|---|---|
| Kind of work | Analysis and evaluation work |
| Jobs that do it | 26 occupations |
| Tool categories that apply | Builders, Tools and auth |
| O*NET activity | Guiding, Directing, and Motivating Subordinates (4.A.4.b.4) |
What this looks like on the job
Not our paraphrase. These are real task statements recorded against this activity, spread across the 26 occupations that perform it.
- Prepare budgets for approval, including those for funding or implementation of programs.
- Prepare budgets and submit estimates for program costs as part of campaign plan development.
- Prepare budgets and approve budget expenditures.
- Plan, administer, and control budgets for contracts, equipment, and supplies.
- Develop budgets for security operations.
- Handle all aspects of employee insurance, benefits, and casualty programs, including monitoring changes in health insurance regulations and creating budgets for benefits and worker's compensation.
- Develop budgets or approve expenditures for supplies, materials, or human resources, ensuring that materials, labor, or equipment are used efficiently to meet production targets.
- Generate and maintain quality control operating budgets.
- Control purchasing department budgets.
- Prepare and manage departmental budgets.
- Prepare budgets for personnel operations.
- Prepare and follow budgets for personnel operations.
- Prepare training budget for department or organization.
- Determine allocations of funds for staff, supplies, materials, and equipment, and authorize purchases.
- Plan, administer, and control budgets, maintain financial records, and produce financial reports.
- Prepare budgets, bids, or contracts.
- Conduct and administer fiscal operations, including accounting, planning budgets, authorizing expenditures, establishing rates for services, and coordinating financial reporting.
- Prepare and administer budgets, approve and review expenditures, and prepare financial reports.
What we would actually use
One recommendation rather than a shortlist, because a shortlist is just your problem handed back. This is what we would buy for analysis and evaluation work, and what it costs.
Start in the assistant with an export of the real data, because the accuracy problem here is a stale copy rather than a weak model. Make, at $9 a month, is the cheapest way to put the pull on a schedule once the analysis is worth repeating.
Chosen for the cheapest thing that does the job, not the best funded. Nothing on this site is sponsored, and the full landscape is there when you want to disagree with us.
The rest of the category
Context, not alternatives to weigh up. We name the layer rather than promise a named product does your specific task.
Matched from the kind of work, not from vendor marketing. Check any of them can reach the system your records actually live in — that connection, not the model, is where these projects stall.
How people actually do it
No workflow names this activity yet, but these automate the same kind of work, with the prompts to paste and what to keep for yourself.
Who does this work
26 occupations in the O*NET database perform this activity. Each one has a full breakdown of its other tasks.
- Accountants and Auditors
- Administrative Services Managers
- Advertising and Promotions Managers
- Architectural and Engineering Managers
- Chief Executives
- Compensation and Benefits Managers
- Education Administrators, Kindergarten through Secondary
- Education Administrators, Postsecondary
- Facilities Managers
- First-Line Supervisors of Retail Sales Workers
- First-Line Supervisors of Security Workers
- Fitness and Wellness Coordinators
- Human Resources Managers
- Industrial Production Managers
- Medical and Health Services Managers
- Natural Sciences Managers
- Property, Real Estate, and Community Association Managers
- Purchasing Managers
- Quality Control Systems Managers
- Regulatory Affairs Managers
- Sales Managers
- Security Managers
- Social and Community Service Managers
- Training and Development Managers
- Transportation, Storage, and Distribution Managers
- Treasurers and Controllers
Work that goes with it
O*NET groups these under “Manage budgets or finances”. In practice they tend to be done by the same person, in the same sitting.
Method. The activity, its taxonomy placement and the occupations that perform it come straight from the public-domain O*NET 30.3 database. The automatability band is ours: we map each of O*NET’s 41 generalized work activities to how much of its output current software can produce, assuming a person still reviews and owns the result. It is a coarse three-way judgment on purpose. A precise-looking percentage here would be invented.