The most difficult aspect of the capital expenditure process is forecasting and the budgeting that needs to be carried in order to classify expense. Capital expense is the amount that is required to invest in assets and other infrastructure development activities.
Take for instance a company embarks on changing its current accounting information systems to an ERP systems. In this scenario the following will be the most challenging aspect of the capital expenditure process:
1. To set apart amount for the purchase of harware and software.
2. To forecast training costs.
3. To forecast implementation costs.
4. To forecast maintenance costs.
5. To transfer data from existing system to a new system which will need a number of man hours, which when utilized will reduce the amount of productivity of the employees.
When an ERP is introduced into the system, only the procurement cost of the software in the initial stage can be considered as capital expese since all other expenses will be recurring expenses. Further versions of ERP, new hardware supporting the revisions, relative training costs and the challenge of movement of data are all the most difficult aspect of the captital expenditure process.