[toddmorey]

I will NEVER forget working as a student in the college bookstore during EOY spending. I watched department chairs throw anything and everything into shopping carts, as if they were gameshow contestants trying to beat the clock.

"What is this Mathematica software? What does it do? I'll take 4 copies."

The idea of course was insanity to me: if you didn't spend your department budget, you were in danger of having it reduced next year. So you were punished for leaving money on the table.

[kentosi]

"... punished for leaving money on the table"

Are there any alternative strategies to this?

I find this concept insane whereby spending more and more is good but spending less is bad.

[marme]

allow them to rollover leftover budget to the next year and never lower their budget. If you do this departments will just carry huge surpluses over every year and not spend money then when something big comes along they will just use their surplus for it rather than ask for their budget to be increased. If you allocate money to a department and they never spend that money it can be kept in the bank earning interest rather than be wasted on things that are not needed. If you really micromanage it you can create shadow budgets where you over promise knowing they are not going to spend their full budget but this is really dangerous and only work in small orgs

[vibrato]

force ROI reports on all expenditures? sure you will get a lot of BS, but there is a disincentive to recklessly spend

[shostack]

There's a lot of stuff you can't put an ROI on. So instead people waste time trying to come up with a poor model.