Financial Procedures Manual

A detailed internal control manual for a UK small or medium-sized business or charity. It sets out who may do what with the organisation’s money, the checks that must happen at every stage, the timetable for month-end and year-end, and the steps that prevent, detect and respond to fraud and error.

Written procedures make your finances less dependent on one person’s memory, help new staff and bookkeepers get things right, support funding and grant applications, and give lenders, auditors, independent examiners and HMRC confidence in your records.

• When the business grows beyond the owner doing everything personally
• When appointing a new bookkeeper, finance manager or outsourced accountant
• After a fraud attempt, a payment error or an audit or independent examination recommendation
• For charities, to support trustees’ duties to safeguard charity assets

• Work through each section and insert your own limits, names and systems
• Complete the authority matrix in Appendix A carefully – this is the heart of the manual
• Where you have too few staff for full segregation, use the compensating controls in section 6
• Have the manual approved by the directors, partners or trustees and minute the approval
• Review it every year and whenever your systems or staff change