Overview

This standard is about the day-to-day management of the production’s expenditure against budget. You will be required to set up the financial monitoring and control systems for a production, as well as informing colleagues about the way the systems work. You will also provide advice to colleagues to help them manage the expenditure in order to deliver the production on budget.  You are also required to monitor and control expenditure for the production.  You are required to identify any budget variations that occur and take corrective action to assist the production process and to provide information to enable decision makers to judge your recommendations. 

This standard is for Production accountants and Assistant production accountants.

 

Performance criteria

You must be able to:

  1. identify the production’s needs for recording, retrieving, processing and storing, financial information
  2. Evaluate available systems and packages for financial monitoring and control
  3. Select a system which incorporates controls to ensure the accuracy, validity and integrity of information
  4. Set up financial monitoring and control systems
  5. Define and agree roles and responsibilities for operating and maintaining the financial system
  6. Monitor the system to identify actual and potential problems
  7. Adjust systems when required to maintain and improve performance
  8. Brief team members about their role in controlling production expenditure and the systems to use, checking their understanding
  9. Use the selected system and package to record expenditure details
  10. Evaluate expenditure reports to confirm that expenditure is within budget
  11. Monitor expenditure against agreed budgets in line with production requirements
  12. Identify and anticipate variations within and between budget headings from information gained through monitoring expenditure
  13. Take corrective action to bring variations to within budget limits and the agreed cost profile when necessary
  14. Negotiate and agree variations within and between budget headings to meet budget constraints
  15. Report progress against budgets to relevant colleagues on the production

 

Knowledge Criteria

You need to know and understand:

  1. The financial controls that are required for the production
  2. The importance of expenditure control to the production’s efficiency and your role and responsibilities in relation to this
  3. The principles and systems that underpin expenditure control
  4. The importance of record keeping to expenditure control and processes and systems used to achieve this
  5. Principles of confidentiality in relation to budgets, what information may be provided to which people
  6. The contributions that individual team members can have on expenditure control
  7. How to brief team members, the production team and heads of department regarding the budget monitoring
  8. The range of variations from the budget which may occur and what effective corrective action to take in response to these
  9. The different types of corrective action to take, including changing production activities, rescheduling expenditure, altering budget allocations
  10. Who the relevant people are to report to including the production team and heads of department
  11. How to select the budgeting and expenditure control package to use
  12. Financial monitoring systems and packages