How can you ensure that other departments are using the budget effectively?

 Finance department ensures the proper usage of budget by each department by maintaining budget control sheet.

Effective budget management involves a complete process.  First of all while preparing the annual budgets the finance department circulate a memo to each department of the organization regarding their requirement for whole year.  Once all the department's requirement received by the finance department then they should with consultation of the higher management incorporate that requirement according the needs while keeping in mind the realistic approach.

After approval of the annual budgets the finance department should designate a person to prepare the Budget control sheet, which means every requisition/demand of each department should route through finance department to check the availability of the budget for that specific item and finance department must mention on the requisition the approval budget, expended till date, requisition amount and balance budget available for remaining period.

Finance department alongwith budget control sheet must update on monthly basis "Budget vs Actual" expenditure sheet to get exact picture of the available budget in each head of account.

Budget vs Actual sheet also enables the finance department to convey the each department if there is any kind of situation of short fall in the budget.

So Finance department ensures the proper usage of budget by each department by maintaining budget control sheet.