Financial Responsibilities
Each organisation has significant financial responsibilities that must be taken seriously. These include:
- Budgeting
- Income generation
- Risk analysis
- Cash flow analysis
- Book keeping and other record keeping
- Dealing with cash
- Financial reporting
- Financial monitoring (are income and expenditure in line with the budget?)
- Financial control (taking remedial action if they are not).
Your organisation must have appropriate financial systems in place to ensure that these responsibilities are carried out properly. A written finance policy is highly recommended. In terms of internal financial control, your procedures might include:
- Using approval or requisition forms before incurring expenditure
- Checking suppliers’ invoices for accuracy and reconciling them regularly
- Sequentially numbering suppliers’ invoices on receipt
- Paying suppliers on time
- Only authorising payment if you have the original documentation to back up the expenditure
- When authorising, marking originals as ‘paid’, together with the cheque number or details of any other payment method
- Ensuring that expenses cheques are not approved/signed by the person receiving the money
- Never signing blank cheques
- Always having two signatories per cheque
- Restrictively crossing all cheques ‘account payee only; not negotiable’
- Safely storing unused cheques and cash
- Keeping detailed records, on receipt, of all monies received
- Using sealed, numbered boxes for public collections
- Using numbered tickets for raffles and fundraising events
- Opening the post by more than one person
- Lodging receipts daily
- Undertaking regular bank reconciliations that are approved by the treasurer.
