CaseWare Africa, a division of AdaptIT, has launched a template for the Modified Cash standard.
The standard was developed by the Office of the Auditor General in National Treasury to mandate the principles by which national and provincial departments should present their financial accounts.
Stephan van der Merwe, product manager at CaseWare Africa, says that the new template complements the existing set of CaseWare templates, and was developed by the CaseWare Africa team at AdaptIT.
“The key benefit of CaseWare’s templates is that they automate the onerous process of compiling financial statements in a prescribed format. This new template will allow national and provincial departments to produce statements that comply with the guidelines issued by National Treasury with the minimum of extra work, and with increased accuracy,” he says.
The Modified Cash template can be set up to draw the necessary data from the state’s central accounting system, Basic Accounting System (BAS), as well as the management information system, Vulindlela.
This information is used to populate Microsoft Word and Excel reports automatically from a single basic data source, eliminating the challenge of version control. If trial balances are updated during the process of creating the financial statements, it is easy to re-import the data into the Excel or Word reports.
Van der Merwe adds that the integration between the template and the source systems makes the audit process much easier and quicker.
“The Modified Cash template is extremely rigorous in its demands and there is little room for interpretation. By reducing human intervention and maximising automation, the process can be made much more accurate while increasing speed. Departments can now provide National Treasury with reports in the required formats with minimal effort, while still supporting the drive towards more efficient, transparent management of taxpayers’ money,” he concludes.