As part of my responsibilities in DevCon as Executive Director, i am to ensure that all legal and financial documents of the organization is well taken care of. If you’re not familiar, all registered companies (for profit or non-profit) is required to submit their financial statements annually to the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR).
For the year 2013, we decided to do our audit yesterday March 27. The people there was our accountant, auditor, our president and me! It was a much better year since all expenses were accounted with receipts. The previous years, as our accountant said were a mess especially in 2010. But im happy things are getting much better for DevCon especially in this area.
If you’re planning to register a non-profit organization, heads up! Its not easy to keep up with the regulations of the government that changes almost twice a year! If you cant accomplish them all, penalties await you. I can only imagine the struggles of the rest of non-profit organization in the country who cant afford the services of an accountant.
I have zero accounting background but the things i learn from this are interesting. So, i have 3 lessons learned:
1. We can no longer remember transactions more than 6 months ago so consolidate all expenses as early as possible. I have poor long term memory, this is especially true for me.
2. Philippines is not business friendly due to its unstable financial regulations. Thats from the accountants themselves.
3. Accountants do a lot of analysis. I had this idea before that accountants just adds and subtracts on a long sheets of tables and they need to be very OC to provide accurate numbers. Apparently, they do much more than that. So if there were issues, they would ask themselves “How do we resolve this?”. Im starting to like that question.
Accounting was something Id never consider doing and still dont. But when work requires it, you just have to do it for the good of the company you happen to love.
Photo credit: Maxxelli Consulting
