What accounting system are you using? Please let us know in the comments section below.  Please list the name of your MFI, country, clients served, and current system:

Notes on Accounting/Cash Management for Current Customers

Enda - Tunisia

Uses a microsoft-based in-house developed application to mimic cash management at their branches. This is reconciled manually with Mifos at the end of the day which is a time consuming process that has led to delays in finalizing financial and operations reports. 

KMBI - Philippines

KMBI is implementing MS Dynamics and will be extracting data from Mifos and consolidating into the accounting systems.  Will be re-defining the accounting processes soon. At present, cash flow and bank reconciliation procedures are done manually, using Excel spreadsheets. The end objective is to produce the weekly cash flow/position report and perform bank recon procedures in Dynamics.  

PAWDEP - Kenya

PAWDEP is in the process of evaluating accounting solutions, they too will be extracting data from Mifos and consolidating into accounting system.  At present, using Loan Performer.  They input all cash receipts, disbursements and petty cash expenses in Loan Performer and are able to generate very simple (transactional) reports.  However, since they do not have a real accounting system, the process stops there and everything is manual from thereon.  They are looking at, more or less, the same setup as KMBI.

Tally in India

In India, we are also importing data from Mifos and posting them as vouchers in Tally.  We are using the built in cash management module in Tally to support the bank reconciliation process and also to support generation of P/L and B/S by branch.   Tally maintains a cash book where one can define bank accounts.  Since Mifos does not support bank accounts, we are looking at using the capability of Tally to be able to post and segregate the Mifos transactions into the proper bank accounts.  

Grameen Koota

Grameen Koota has built their own module - something that looks similar to Mifos that takes into account simple cash activities at the branch.  Previously when they were at 80 branches, they were still doing integration by hand and sent reports monthly to the HO.

Cash Management Process

Currently no standard process flow for cash management for our customers at the moment.  The MFIs that we have seen have varied processes and varied banking practices (this is the main challenge) and so it is difficult to define a generic process for cash management.

Most Important Cash Management Needs

1. To know the cash position by branch and consolidated (not to wait 10 days for this but to have this daily, if possible) 
2. To be able to track deposits and disbursements for each depository bank that they have
3. To be able to move funds between depository banks of branches and head office and keep track of these movements
4. To be able to perform bank reconciliation properly, given no. 2
5. Petty cash management