Capacity Building

My job title has to take a prize as one of the longest job titles in Uganda! Officially I'm a Volunteer Partner Financial Capacity Building Officer. 6 words doesn't fit into most spaces so it gets shortened to Fin Capacity Building Officer or something similar!

But what am I actually doing and is it making a difference?

At the moment I'm focussing on the reconciliation between the cash book and the expenditure shown in the monitoring forms. This should be straightforward, but as the records were not reconciled from the start of the grant then differences have crept in. I haven't yet found an organisation where the overall reconciliation balanced first time. The ease of reconciling the whole grant has varied widely between organisations. I introduced a reconciliation form for the quarter into the monitoring pack for the January to March quarter. A few of the organisations have been completing this successfully and in these organisations the task of completing the overall reconciliation has been relatively straightforward. In others it has been more difficult and in a couple it is an ongoing nightmare! Around half are now fully reconciled with further work needed on the rest.

Once the reconciliation is done a forecast can be prepared for the remaining balance. All of the organisations have exchange rate gains on the grant as the value of the major currencies has increased relative to the Ugandan Shilling. So they have more shillings left than they expected, always a good place to be as the end of the grant period approaches.

The organisations are being encouraged to meet minimum standards set for the partner organisations globally. These really are minimum, e.g. a monthly bank reconciliation, cash counts and reconciliation, cash books and third party receipts for expenditure. So the next step in the visit programme is to review progress towards meeting these standards and checking areas like the vouchers for the expenditure.

Coding the expenditure has been a major challenge. It has been great to work closely with the Programme Officer in this area as they understand the work and likely costs much better than me. I can't quite get used to the Ugandan habit of coding expenditure to the budget line with a balance remaining instead of the one the expenditure relates to.

The other major area I'm looking at in the current round of visits is a review of the whole organisation salaries and how the salaries charged to the grant relate to the overall salary cost and the work being done.This involves checking the calculations, the tax and NSSF, employment contract and any justifications of the time charged to the project. A steep learning curve for me as I'm having to learn a whole new set of tax and employment legislation.

All of this work is taking a minimum of 3 days per organisation, add in a day travelling each way for the organisations in the north, plus time to write up reports and the continuing other work. It's more monitoring than capacity building but I'm getting an in depth understanding of the organisation and the capabilities of the finance and programme teams. I'm looking forward to being able to build on this knowledge of the organisations to take their financial management to the next level. That is when I'm hoping I'll really feel like I'm making a difference. It's good that the placement is for 2 years as there is still so much to do.