Book excerpt: Understanding budgeting goals, processes, and incentives are vital skills for health care managers as they are responsible for creating budgets and managing their departments within the established budget. However, many health care managers lack these basic skills. This book is a comprehensive examination of budgeting practices designed to provide students with the ability to construct budgets and analyze differences between actual financial results and the budget. Each chapter takes the reader through a step-by-step process to analyze systems, incorporate organizational goals into budgets, identify performance issues, and explore how budget systems impact behavior.