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. 5. Discussion The process of capital budgeting, at the companies where the CFOs responded to this survey, would appear to have not changed greatly over the past ten years. There is no indication from the findings of this study that capital budgeting is being linked to the activity level as suggested by Cook et al. (2000). Only nine of the respondents with ERP systems stated that those systems affected capital budgeting suggesting that the impact of ERP systems on capital budgeting has been minimal and, probably, preliminary. ERP systems and other forms of computerisation have contributed to capital budgeting by (1) an increased use of analytical or measurement tools for capital budgeting, such risk adjusted profitability index, risk adjustments, ROI, WACC, DCF, IRR, payback, and (2) an increase in formalisation and rigour in the overall process, such as an investment management committee, capex manual. The 90 companies were selected from the largest manufacturing and retail companies operating in Australia. There was no indication that the responding companies were biased, thus the results are highly suggestive of the status of capital budgeting in large Australian companies. It was found that computerisation impacted the management accounting processes at all responding companies, although only 27 of the 35 had ERP systems. This finding suggests that non-ERP computerisation was also impacting on management accounting. It is difficult to separate out the exact impact of ERP systems from the more general computerisation which improved the functionality of management accounting. Every aspect of management accounting improved, including more detail, more accurate, faster, more integrated, and improved data integrity. However, the same management accounting techniques were being used, but they were performing at a higher level. Changes had occurred to all management accounting at the five identified areas in the past 10 years. Budgeting had been reported as changed in 31 of the 35 firms. In particular the functionality of budgeting had greatly increased by moving to spreadsheets and then to integrated budget models with ERP systems and such management support systems as Hyperion. There were 28 responses out of a possible 35 that stated that operating statements had changed in the past 10 years. In particular, functionality had improved with computerisation, specifically ERP systems with their single chart of accounts and relational data warehouse. The operating statements had changed with more automation, real-time or next day production, with for example, more focus on KPIs. Twenty-nine respondents said forecasting had changed in the past 10 years. Functionality improved by moving production to spreadsheets and then to ERP systems and management support systems such as Hyperion. Functionality also improved with performance measurement during the last ten years in 29 of the responding companies. Performance measurement was extended because of a greater understanding of operations and because of computerisation, particularly ERP systems; performance measurement was more extensive and timelier. Moreover, this greater level of performance was accomplished without increases in staff. Costing was the management accounting technique where the least changes occurred, with only 21 companies being cited for changes in the past 10 years. Computerisation had contributed to costing improvements such as improved modell