must work in a smaller or private one. I've been in sales for 20 years and we always get huge upswings at the last month of every quarter and even larger in Q4 because most business do exactly like mine. Typically we can count on 25% of our sales in month one, 25% in month two and 50% in month 3. Same for quarters 50% Q1-3 and then 50% our year in Q4 with the final month being the biggest. In fact a sizable portion of my time is spent trying to figure out how to do demand gen activities that will normalize these spikes. We always end up running campaigns to "capture remaining budget" towards the end of every year because as hard as we try people spend to their budget and will blow the rest on things they kinda/sorta need rather than have anything remaining.
Use it or lose it budgets are not exclusive to Government
At the highest level, spending is controlled by allowances that are accounted for in our product pricing. Thereafter, budgets are formed based on sales projections for the coming year, and budgets are dynamically adjusted up and down based on actual sales results over the course of the year.
Headcount is controlled by staffing models which are tied directly to sales results.
Budgets are reforecasted every quarter with money being "moved around" among various functional/business budgets to account for changes in the business environment. Needless to say, we have no kingdoms with absolute discretion over their budgets.
We will selectively begin some project investments early if we are running a surplus going into the 4th quarter, but any such expenditures go through an approval process.
Expense management is one of 4 components of the incentive structure, and incentives are maximized when actual expenses are favorable to budget.