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A manual your team will open

Financial policies and procedures written around your systems and limits, checked against the ledger, and owned by named people.

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Part of
Compliance Documentation
Runs as
4 stages, from inventory and trace to adopt and brief
You receive
6 deliverables, listed below
Pricing
Quoted after a scoping call

Template policies describe someone else's company

Many financial policy manuals began life as a template or an auditor's example. They mention a purchasing committee that never met, a petty cash fund that closed years ago and an approval workflow from a previous system. Staff learn the real rules from each other, which works until the person who knows them leaves.

A manual that does not match practice creates two problems. It gives false comfort to the board and to the funders who read it. And when an auditor, lender or grantor tests a transaction against the written policy, every gap between the two becomes a finding. Rewriting the manual around how the company actually works, and changing the practice where it should change, closes both.

Engraving of tailor's shears cutting cloth along a pinned paper pattern, the handles in magenta.
Cut to the pattern, every time.

Core financial policies, written from practice

  • Authority and approvals

    Delegation of authority, signing limits, contract approval and the exception route, by transaction type and amount.

  • Purchasing and payables

    Requisitions, purchase orders, three-way match, vendor setup and bank changes, payment runs and urgent payments.

  • Revenue and receivables

    Customer setup, credit limits, billing, credit memos, write-offs and cash application.

  • Close and reporting

    The close calendar, journal entry preparation and review, reconciliations, accruals and management reporting.

  • Cash, cards and expenses

    Bank accounts and signatories, surplus cash, corporate cards, expense reimbursement and receipt rules.

  • Records, conflicts and assets

    Document retention, conflict-of-interest disclosure, related-party transactions, fixed assets and capitalization thresholds.

Editable documents, each with an owner

DeliverableWhat it isWhen
Policy gap registerEach current document compared with practice, with a recommendation to change the policy or the practiceWeek 3
Policy manualShort policies stating rules and thresholds, in editable format, with an owner and review date on eachWeeks 4 to 9
ProceduresStep-by-step instructions naming the system screen, the role and the evidence for each taskWeeks 5 to 10
Approval matrixOne-page delegation of authority that every policy requiring approval refers toWeek 5
Review calendar and change logOwners, review dates and a log of changes, ready for audit and funder requestsWeek 11
Staff briefingsShort sessions for each team on what changed, using examples from your own transactionsWeek 12

Twelve weeks, gap register to briefings

  1. Weeks 1 to 2

    Inventory and trace

    We gather every policy, procedure and informal practice, and walk through real transactions with the people who perform them.

  2. Weeks 2 to 3

    Test against the ledger

    We check whether practice matches the written rule, for example whether every purchase above the PO threshold actually had a PO.

  3. Weeks 4 to 10

    Draft and review

    We draft in batches by process. Owners review each batch, and management settles any questions about thresholds or ownership.

  4. Weeks 10 to 12

    Adopt and brief

    The board or owners approve the policies, and we brief each team on what changed.

Owners' time matters more than documents

  • Every existing policy, procedure, memo or email that staff treat as a rule
  • Read-only ledger access or exports, so practice can be tested against policy
  • A named owner for each policy area who can review drafts within a week
  • Management decisions on thresholds and approvers, gathered in two or three short meetings
  • Board or owner time to approve the final policies

Is this the right fit?

A good fit

  • Companies whose manual predates their current accounting system
  • Organizations preparing for a first audit, a lender covenant review or due diligence
  • Nonprofits that need board-approved policies for funders and for Form 990 disclosures
  • Companies bringing acquired entities under one set of rules

Not the right fit

  • Employment, tax or legal policies, which need to be drafted by counsel or a tax adviser
  • Anyone who wants a generic template without adapting it to their own systems

Policy and procedure do different jobs

A policy states the rule: any purchase over $15,000 needs a purchase order approved by the budget holder and the controller. A procedure states how to follow it: which screen, which role, what evidence. Mixing the two produces long documents in which the rule is hard to find and the steps are out of date. We keep them apart. Policies are approved by the board or owners, and procedures are maintained by the finance team.

The ledger shows which rules hold

Before drafting, we test a handful of rules against your data. For example:

  • Purchases above the PO threshold that had no purchase order, or a PO dated after the invoice
  • Expense claims above the receipt threshold with no receipt, or with receipts that repeat across claims
  • Credit memos issued without the approval the policy requires
  • Bank accounts in the ledger that no policy or signatory list mentions

Each result tells us whether the policy needs to change or the practice does. That test is the difference between a manual written from interviews and one written from evidence. The article on what a financial policies and procedures manual should contain shows the outline we start from.

Owners keep the manual alive

A manual starts going stale the day it is approved. Each document names an owner and a next review date, and a short change log records what changed and why. Triggers for an early review are written in: a new system, a new entity, a change in approval limits, an audit finding. The review calendar fits on one page, so the controller can see at a glance which documents are due this quarter and who has them.

AI tools need explicit policy lines

Generated receipts, AI coding of invoices and automated approvals all touch policies written before those tools existed. We add rules where the risk is new. Receipts must match card data, not only an image. AI-coded invoices above a set amount need a person's approval. The article on an expense policy for AI-generated receipts works through one example.

Where the approval matrix itself needs a deeper redesign, including system roles and access, our segregation of duties project handles that work.

What people ask before hiring us

How long should a financial policy be?

As short as it can be while still stating the rule, the threshold, the owner and the exception route. Procedures can be longer because they describe steps. We keep the two separate, so the policy stays readable and the procedure can change when a system does.

Do you write procedures for our specific system?

Yes. Procedures name the system, the screen or report and the role. We work with QuickBooks Online, Xero, NetSuite, Sage Intacct and Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central.

What if our practice is better than our policy?

Then the policy changes. The gap register records, for each difference, whether the written rule or the practice should win, and management makes the call.

Will the board need to approve the manual?

Usually the board or owners approve the policies and management approves the procedures. That split lets procedures change without a board meeting, while the rules that matter most stay under board control.

Also in Compliance Documentation

Policies, procedures, codes of conduct and grant documentation written in plain language, matched to your systems, and checked against what the ledger shows.

  • Code of Conduct & Speak-Up Programs

    An eight-to-twelve-week project that redesigns your code of conduct and builds the reporting channel, triage, investigation protocol and anti-retaliation process behind it.

  • Grant & Uniform Guidance Compliance

    An eight-to-twelve-week project that writes the policies 2 CFR 200 requires, fixes time-and-effort and subrecipient processes, and runs a mock single audit before the real one.

Related work and reading

Services

  • Segregation of Duties & Approval Design

    A six-to-eight-week project that maps every user's access against their duties, removes conflicting rights, redesigns the approval matrix and adds compensating controls where the team is too small to split.

  • Training Programs

    Half-day sessions to six-week cohorts for managers, staff and boards, built on your policies, your approval limits and anonymized examples from your own ledger.

Articles and scenarios

Sectors

Tell us what you are seeing

A first conversation is a scoping call: what worries you, what you need to show, and to whom. You leave it with a view on where to start, whether or not you hire us.

Start a conversation
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