Assessment of Accounting Practice of Local NGO’s in Hawassa City Administration

Abstract

The purpose of this study was assessment of accounting practices of selected local NGO’s in Hawassa city administration the key accounting activities; such as accounting practices, fund raising, account record keeping, fund utilizing, internal controls and reporting systems. To achieve this purpose, questionnaires were develop and distributed to targeted population; they are Accountants, Internal Auditors, and Department Heads with in purposively selected ten local NGO’s that work in Health and Education, as well as Social, Women and child support in Hawassa city administration. The primary data was collected from 29 targeted respondents through questionnaire. The major findings were: local NGOs are depending on donations, lack of standardized financial statement preparation, insufficient number of highly qualified staffs, weakness of record keeping for gifts received by voluntary, lack of monthly financial statement reconciliation, none of finance staff participation in budget preparation and review, lack of cash forecast preparation, delay of fund transfer and activity performance reports from donors and implementer respectively, lack of review of financial management and staff job description clarification, lack of board’s regular meeting schedule and weakness of internal control systems. The NGOs should establish a well-organized accounting and financial management systems, account record keeping, fund management, internal control and timely submission of activity performance report to concerned government bodies and donors.