The budget also receives close scrutiny from the Conference Board, and should be developed carefully. An estimate of attendance must be made based on paper submissions, attendance at recent ICASSPS, and geographical location. Preliminary budgets should then be developed for low, medium, and high attendance. The General Chairperson should be careful to ensure that all IEEE requirements have been satisfied. It is essential that side-by-side comparisons be made with line items of previous conference budgets. The first side-by-side comparison should be presented at the time of the formal presentation which includes the preliminary budget. As more up-to-date information becomes available, the side-by-side comparison and budget should be updated. A spread-sheet program and computer-readable data may be available from previous conferences to aid in this task.