Our partner, an international children’s charity, needs to undertake a comprehensive review of financial systems and procedures (FSPs). It has been through significant challenges in recent years and now has a new CEO in place; the CEO and the Trustees are of the view that enhancements to FSPs may be needed to ensure that the charity is in the best position to execute its strategy and maintain compliance with its duties.
The primary aims of the review are to:
a) Identify and document all relevant FSPs, including details of which FSPs are being used or applied and which are not;
b) Identify weaknesses in FSPs;
c) Assess the potential risk to the organisation from each identified weakness as either high, medium or low; and
d) Make recommendations as to how the identified weaknesses can be addressed, taking into account the charity’s size, resources and the need to achieve cost-effective outcomes.
e) Work with the charity to put new or rectified FSPs into place
f) Take the lead in developing an appropriate procedures manual.
Our partner envisages that this would be a detailed process:
It has set out below some of the matters that it has identified that should be addressed in the review. In addition, appendix 1 (available to successful applicants) sets out background information about the charity, and appendix 2 (also available to applicants) provides some detail regarding existing accounting systems and procedures. However our partner sees developing the remit for this review as an iterative and interactive process and as such we would welcome feedback from the expert on it.
The successful candidate will be required to review:
Income:
• Does the current reporting system have sufficient granularity of income categotrioes? In particular, should income be better categorised into e.g.
• Unsolicited donations,
• regular income
• Should corporate and events all be separated out?
• Programme income forecasts/budget:
• Should be forecasted under separate heading and both income and expenditure forecast and actuals in unrestricted income/expenditure – not programmes?
• Concerns about income being analysed by volunteer and only randomly checked by Finance Manager when posting as ‘instructed’ by volunteer
• Methods to ensure that all donations of all kinds are acknowledged/thanked on a timely basis.
Expenditure:
• Are current authorisation processes sufficiently robust?
Management accounts (Reporting to CEO and Trustees):
• Is current process too manual and susceptible to spreadsheet errors – are there opportunities for more automatic download procedures and verification of accuracy of process?
• Summary management accounts spreadsheets do not always link clearly or accurately to supporting spreadsheets
• In summary management accounts unrestricted actuals/reforecast are formulated manually
• Unexplained transfers from restricted to unrestricted are put manually in the summary management accounts, which is not acceptable
• Summary management accounts show projections of performance to date against budget, but is unclear as it does not take into account factors such as carried forward balances etc.
This role can be a full-time project or a part-time ongoing work.
If you are interested in this role, please email ukvolunteers@afid.org.uk or call 0208 741 7000
