Lessons Learned Guiding Principles
Financial management cannot be driven by the finance department. The job of the Finance department is to provide timely and accurate financial reports according to the organizational structure and to advise management. Management needs to drive the Finance Department. To do so, good management systems are required to track budgets, forecast expenses, regularly account for variances, and develop and track annual budgets. The Board is also closely involved through a Finance Committee to monitor on a quarterly basis the budget and balance sheets.
There’s no magic to financial management: the keys are organization, accurate and timely posting, transparency, effective communication and sharing.
Department managers may want to use financial planning forms at the beginning of each new fiscal. These forms have all the anticipated costs for the department for that year. The form is submitted to finance and helps to plan for the budget line items within departments.
