A brief case history describing a situation in which two administrative areas of a college joined to outline a program for the resolution of a budgetary control problem is presented. Adjunct instructional costs had been escalating but with the onset of city and state fiscal constraints it was essential that such costs be controlled. Part of the problem was the lack of a controlling mechanism to ensure that departments could not introduce more sections of courses then the college could afford. A representative of the college's campus center was consulted after most of the variables and formulas for an academic planning system had been identified. The data entry program used to construct the college's Master Course File accessed a table of approved instructional hours (previously determined as falling within budgetary limits) so as to reject sections that exceeded these hours. During registration, the enrollment in any section could be accessed using a terminal. In the future, the college hopes to apply historic data concerning student enrollment patterns to project the needs for specific numbers of sections on the Master Course File. (SW)