Capital budgeting is a company’s formal process used for evaluating potential expenditures or investments that are significant in amount. It involves the decision to invest the current funds for addition, disposition, modification or replacement of fixed assets. The large expenditures include the purchase of fixed assets like land and building, new equipments, rebuilding or replacing existing equipments, research and development, etc. The large amounts spent for these types of projects are known as capital expenditures. Capital Budgeting is a tool for maximizing a company’s future profits since most companies are able to manage only a limited number of large projects at any one time.
Capital budgeting usually involves calculation of each project’s future accounting profit by period, the cash flow by period, the present value of cash flows after considering time value of money, the number of years it takes for a project’s cash flow to pay back the initial cash investment, an assessment of risk, and various other factors.
FEATURES OF CAPITAL BUDGETING
- It involves high risk
- Large profits are estimated
- Long time period between the initial investments and estimated returns