A message from the Acting Deputy Vice Chancellor, Finance Planning and Development to all the University community during this lockdown.

Dear University Community,

I hope you are all staying safe during this time.   The University has experienced significant growth in research and consultancy funds managed by the Grants office, thanks to your efforts.

As we improve on our internal control measures to continually meet evolving government auditors and funder requirements, it has become necessary to amend our Financial Regulations 2016, specifically the Section 4.9 dealing with requesting and accounting for advances.  In addition, this has also given us the opportunity to address some of the challenges researchers have been facing with the current regulations. Specifically,

1.  No cash advances shall be taken by PIs to pay individuals (eg data collectors, conference participants, etc). Payments will be made by the grants office directly to the appropriate mobile money or bank account of the beneficiary.
2. Receipts that accompany advances in support of purchased goods or services MUST now have a corresponding ETR as required by government.
3. Whereas researchers had TWO weeks to account for advances, this has now been extended to FOUR weeks.
4. Whereas no one could have more than one advance at a time, researchers can now have up to TWO simultaneous advances, as long as they are from different projects. The one advance restriction still remains on a per project basis.

The amended section of the regulations are attached and take effect immediately (exempted are advance requests already being processed).

Download PDF on the ammendment