When a project activity entails functions which require UNDP staff or other personnel for execution, but full-time contracting is not warranted, the project may source UNDP personnel indirectly employed for the project, who are located in the Country Office or any other UNDP location. Such service requirements, referred to as “delivery enabling services”, must be budgeted within each applicable project activity or function.
The Detailed annual review of the financial situation (Annex 1) presents a comprehensive review and analysis of UNDP activities at the global and aggregate levels from a financial perspective. An overview of the overall aggregates is shown in the narrative document and assesses funding performance by nature - regular resources, other resources - and provides a summary of the current year financial position of UNDP with prior year comparatives.
Category of costs associated with “programmes” and “development effectiveness” activities which contribute to the effective delivery of development results, as follows:
a) programmes: category of costs associated with specific programme components or projects that contribute to delivery of development results contained in country/regional/global programme documents or other programming arrangements;
b) development effectiveness: category of costs associated with activities of a policy, advisory, technical and implementation nature that are needed for achievement of the objectives of programmes and projects in the focus areas of the organizations. These inputs are essential to the delivery of development results, and are not included in specific programme components or projects in country, regional or global programme documents.
Under this modality, UNDP conducts expenditure from requisition through to disbursement with no cash being transferred to the Partner. However, the implementing partner has full programmatic control and so full control over expenditures.
A method of financing the budget of a partner country through a transfer of resources from an external financing agency to the national treasury of the partner government. The funds thus transferred are managed in accordance with the recipient’s budgetary procedures. This includes using the national regulatory framework for financial allocations, procurement and accounting systems.
Under this modality, UNDP advances cash funds on a quarterly basis to the Partner for the implementation of agreed upon programme activities. The Partner in turn reports back expenditure. Note that the recording of expenditures, from requisition through to disbursement, occurs in the books of the Partner. UNDP is pre-funding the activities with advances of cash.
Direct Implementation (DIM) is the modality whereby UNDP takes on the role of Implementing Partner. In DIM modality, UNDP has the technical and administrative capacity to assume the responsibility for mobilizing and applying effectively the required inputs in order to reach the expected outputs. UNDP assumes overall management responsibility and accountability for project implementation. Accordingly UNDP must follow all policies and procedures established for its own operations. In DIM modality, UNDP has the technical and administrative capacity to assume the responsibility for mobilizing and applying effectively the required inputs in order to reach the expected outputs. UNDP assumes overall management responsibility and accountability for project implementation. Accordingly UNDP must follow all policies and procedures established for its own operations.
This refers to the arrangement where payments are made directly to vendors and other third parties providing goods or services for agreed upon programme activities on behalf of the Partner upon request and following completion of the activities. Under this modality, the Partner is responsible/accountable for the project expenses and carries out the procurement actions, but requests UNDP to make the disbursements. The office provides accounting services and banking services to the Partner.
Direct Project Costing includes programme implementation and implementation support activities, costs incurred by UNDP to support project implementation. The pricing of inputs to UNDP projects & programmes should be based on actual costs for clearly identifiable services. There are three main options for implementing DPC: • Application of the CO workload study results, combined with multiple funding lines for posts • Application of the Universal Price Lists (UPL) or Local Price List (LPL) for transactional costs recovery • Creation and management of a stand-alone DPC project.
A system located on the Intranet and can be reached via the OFA website. Users will find a list of Procedures which they can select and navigate to a form where they provide the details of their request and to which they must attach the required documents. Following submission of the form(s), workflows associated with these tasks are automated to ensure appropriate controls, approvals and routing of documentation, as well as regarding service requests to enable the maintenance of their status by CO’s and HQ units. For Inventory Management, DMS serves as document depository which holds Inventory Control Reports and Certifications.
Depending on the archival value to the organization, organizational records fall into two categories: temporary and permanent files. UNDP's retention schedule complies with external Audit requirements. For Programme files the retention period is seven years following the completion of the project.
Scheduled audit: These refer to systematic and independent examination of data, statements, records, operations and performances of a partner. A scheduled audit is either an internal control audit which is conducted for Partners which are rated “Low” risk and “Medium” risk or a financial audit which should be conducted for all other Partners including non-assessed Partners.
Refers to the financial contribution to a government budget, managed in a national account by a government entity for a specific set of sector or programme results.
For UN Agencies who do not use Quantum (the “non-Quantum Agencies”), a dedicated Service Clearing Account (SCA) is established for each Agency. Through the SCA, all global prefunding received from UN Agencies are recorded, and all services provided by UNDP Offices to these UN Agencies are recorded. A dedicated Service Clearing Account is not applicable to Quantum Agencies (UNFPA, UN Women, UNU, UNCDF, UNV, UNITAR).
Signatories are staff who have been designated by the Treasurer to operate UNDP bank accounts. The Signatory Panel for any UNDP bank account is made up of those individuals designated by the Treasurer or under the delegated authority, by the Resident Representative to operate that UNDP bank account.
Categories of costs of a cross-cutting nature that (a) involve material capital
investments, or (b) do not represent a cost related to the management activities of the organization.
Periodic on-site reviews (spot checks) are performed to assess the accuracy of the financial records for cash transfers to the IP and the status of programme implementation (through a review of financial information), and to determine whether there have been any significant changes to internal controls. The spot check is not an audit hence, the extent of expenditure testing is generally lower than what would be undertaken during an audit. Spot checks should be completed prior to the operational and financial closure of the project to ensure supporting documents are still available for review and any adjustments required in Quantum are made.
Standard services are those that are provided in the same way each time they are requested, and following the standard procedures in more or less the same fashion across UNDP offices. A list of standard services is included in the Universal Price List (Annex 2 - UPL). All costs are computed using the existing guiding costing methodology (Annex 1). If a UNDP office assesses that the UPL does not fully cover the total costs for providing services, they can establish locally negotiated prices using transparent, prevailing market rates. These rates should be communicated to the UN entities prior to implementation.
The Statistical Annex reflects the financial situation of UNDP both at the aggregate and detailed levels, presented in the form of statistical tables. It contains the following information:a. 10 year-trend of UNDP Programme expenditureb. Overall Revenue, Expenses and Accumulated Surpluses, by resource categoriesc. Total Expenses by cost classification, region and expense categoryd. Programme expenses by executing entity/implementing partners, responsible party; by country, region or territory; by expense category; by trust fund, territory and country
Or “archiving”, deals with the preservation and maintenance of non-current records on a temporary or permanent/indefinite basis in accordance with an established retention schedule.
In collaboration with BERA, the Structured Funding Dialogue is prepared in response to Executive Board decision 2018/16, which requested that UNDP review the format and content of the annual report on contributions and revenue projections for future years to improve the quality of the Structured Funding Dialogue, including by providing an overview of the funding in relation to funding requirement for the implementation of the current UNDP Strategic Plan and the resource estimates for the next Strategic Plan. BMS/OFM inputs focus on the financial situation which is detailed in annex I and the section relating to Working with United Nations system assets where feedback is sought from relevant areas such as UNV, UNCDF.
These are series of cheques automatically produced by Quantum in the pay cycle batch process. Cheque numbers are assigned automatically. The starting number is increased by one unit each time a cheque is generated for a particular bank account. The user downloads the payment file generated during the pay cycle for cheque printing. Offices can use the cheque-writer software developed specifically for use with the System Check format to customize cheque formats and add special characters.