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A bank reconciliation is a very powerful control tool that enables the organisation to identify omissions and errors in its own records, as well as being the only way to spot cheque fraud, bank errors and even bank fraud. It is therefore very important for managers to carefully check bank reconciliation statements every month.

A budget monitoring report is a financial report that shows actual income and expenditure for a certain period compared to the budget for the same period. Finance staff should prepare budget monitoring reports regularly throughout each project, normally once per month

When you operate a fixed float for petty cash (called an imprest) then the amount you top up is always equal to the amount that you spent. This form lists out all the payments made since the previous top up, as the basis for requesting the next top up. Use it every time you wish to top up your petty cash float, so that signatories can know what the money was spent on before withdrawing more cash from the bank.

This payroll spreadsheet can be used in most countries, and is designed for small NGOs with fewer than 15 or so employees.

A transaction involving money is always backed up by a payment voucher or receipt. The equivalent back up document for a transaction not involving the movement of money is called a journal voucher. Examples of ‘non-cash’ transactions include to recognise a donation in kind of a computer, to correct a coding error in a previous closed month, to charge interest on a loan or depreciate fixed assets.

Donors may have their own codes, formats and currencies. You can use your budget worksheet as a basis for converting your budget (with your own codes, currencies etc) into the donor’s required presentation.

The finance manual describes an organisation’s financial systems and procedures. Its purpose is to help programme and finance staff understand their responsibilities for financial management, and how finance systems and procedures fit together. Manuals should be as easy to read as possible, keeping jargon to a minimum and explaining any specific finance terminology used.

If you record expenses as you actually pay for them (ie on a cash basis) it is also useful to know what payments you are committed to making, even if they aven’t been paid for yet. For example, goods or services you have received but not been invoiced for, unpaid bills, orders placed, contracts signed.