Since we’ve wrapped up planting for the 2013 season and have not yet started expansion, the finance team took the time to capitalize on this quiet period to hold a week of capacity building exercises and training.
Salia, Mariam and Leontine – our superstar finance team in Mali and Senegal!
Together, the finance team facilitated a series of training and workshop sessions for each other to improve and strengthen financial support services for myAgro and its farmers. The finance team in Mali and Senegal are responsible for daily cash management; payroll, bank account and SMS payment oversight.
In addition to specific skill-based workshops like learning how to use Quickbooks, the finance team also shared best practices between the two country programs and brainstormed ways they could be more responsive to our office and field teams. One idea that came out of the productive discussions was to hold office hours in the main room every Thursday when the admin and marketing teams prepare budgets for the following week to help the office staff create more useful budgets.
The finance team also did a field visit to observe an internal auditor complete field audit to confirm that payments made to vendors are reaching our database correctly.
Our auditor compares our reports to the reports he finds in the field to confirm accuracy and resolve problems.
At the end of the training, the finance team will have finalized a new operating manual for their department which will be incredibly useful since we’re set to expand from 1200 farmers to over 6000 in a few months. Equally importantly, our finance team will have built strong relationships with each other through the training, and will start the new year prepared and motivated for the challenges to come.
