Financial Policy and Procedure Documentation

Lean Finance, Expense Review, Budgets, Finance Team, CFO, Virtual CFO, Financial policy analyser

Documenting your financial policies and procedures is a task that you know must get done at some stage, but it's rare that it makes it to the urgent list. However, in getting it completed, you know you will have more consistency, less confusion, and greater compliance, not to mention the reduced onboarding time required for new employees.

Ask yourself:

Where or with whom does critical institutional knowledge currently reside?

If two key people left at a similar time, could a replacement get up to speed with minimal disruption to the reporting outputs?

Would the CEO and Board be happy with suspect reporting and forecasts while the business muddles through for three to six months until a replacement is up to speed? If not, who will carry the responsibility for the situation?

Could the cost of the high-priced temporary resource be minimised if processes were documented and straightforward to follow?

With our experience, the Hurricane Consulting team have the skills to:

~ Review the current status of financial policies and procedures and identify any gaps or out-of-date documentation

~ Create (using templates) or update policies and procedures by interviewing users, understanding the current methods they follow, recommending any changes, and updating and publishing the documents. User training on the new or updated policies/ procedures can also be provided

~ Where required, implement suitable training/ learning software incorporating how-to videos, screenshots and comprehension quizzes for self-directed learning

~ Establish ‘owners’ of each policy/ procedure and a suitable review/ update timetable

~ Create an overriding “Policy on policies” if required, to confirm:

who can create policies
who can approve policies before being published
where policies are published. Who maintains the policy repository
access restrictions
where master copies are kept
how often policies are reviewed
identify if electronic workflows need to be updated when policies change

The question should never be about whether you can afford the time and/or cost to create quality process documentation, rather whether you can afford not to!

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