Certificate in Municipal Finance and Administration

Why select this training course?

The Certificate in Municipal Finance and Administration by Rcademy is designed to help its participants apply strategic and well-thought plans of financial management competencies to achieve efficient, effective, and economical use of any public funds at their disposal and other local government resources available. All the participants will understand different techniques of budgeting processes, strategic planning, internal control, financial management processes, reporting, and auditing processes. Individual participants stand to gain benefits through personalized training to gain the required skills and knowledge to solve real-world problems at their place of work.

What is municipal finance administration?

It is a profession that manages various interrelated components of revenue, planning, cash and expenditure, budgeting, procurement, reporting and oversight, and asset management at the local government level. The professionals considered municipal finance administrators to have the capacity and systems to ensure the successful implementation of service delivery efforts, infrastructure projects, and improvement in the levels and frequency of service delivery.

What is the importance of a financial administrator?

A financial administrator’s main importance is ensuring the long-term sustainability of municipalities and the local government through proper and efficient management of various resources at their disposal. The lack of a financial administrator professional in a municipality will lead to opaque and weak financial management that can easily result in misdirection and misappropriation of resources and increase the rates of corruption. They hold the primary legislative responsibility for financial management and, together with the leadership of the municipalities, are responsible for the entire implementation of projects and guaranteeing better results. They have the principal duty and ethical requirement to act in honesty, fidelity, and integrity and the public’s best interest in all seasons.

The Certificate in Municipal Finance and Administration by Rcademy will empower you to produce high-quality and timely financial management reports to allow management to proactively take action on the provided information and identify problems easily. The training will strengthen your understanding of municipal financial roles and support a performance-oriented municipality. Some of the skills you will learn by taking this Rcademy training course include aligning plans, and programs with a budget and handling better reporting, preparing annual financial statements, meeting deadlines for and approving budgets, how to fund benchmarking and compliance, and how strengthening oversight through the publication of the correct information.

Who should attend?

The Certificate in Municipal Finance and Administration by Rcademy is ideal for:

• Municipal accountant
• Municipal executive officers
• Financial officers
• Project managers
• Auditing officers
• Budgeting managers
• Oversight personnel
• Financial reporting officers
• Are any other professionals who might be interested

What are the course objectives?

The objectives of The Certificate in Municipal Finance and Administration by Rcademy are to enable participants to be able to:

• Understand how to effectively prepare financial statements
• Develop strategic plans for municipalities to ensure proper utilization of existing resources
• Deploy resources to the correct project or projects with the most impact on the community
• Learn financial analysis techniques that will propel them to higher levels in their careers
• Understand the financial system of local governments, municipalities, and communities in general
• Develop better and improved financial policies
• Audit existing financial records and budgets
• Prepare budgets for various occasions, programs, and projects
• Communicate effectively about financial planning
• understand better funds appropriation with the municipalities
• Apply the correct risk in municipal funds
• Participate in designing and implementing municipal financial plans
• Understand cost estimation principles

How will this course be presented?

The municipal financial administration course is a practical course that will teach participants various techniques and methods that can be applied to their work and be used in solving real-world problems. Therefore, the methods used are designed to instill practical skills in the participants and ensure maximum application of the theories used during the training. Some methods will include a video presentation, lecture notes, exercises, assignments, group discussions, case studies, financial software training, hands-on examples, tests, and illustrations. The professionals who will be presenting this course are highly experienced in both teaching and their area of domain.

What are the topics covered in this course?

Module 1: The Municipal Ideals

• Conducting municipal finance programs
• Consulting with the right parties
• Ethics in municipal finance administration
• Comparative Structure of municipal codes of Conduct
• Source of municipal revenue

Module 2: Public Finance

• Effective management of municipal assets and liabilities
• Preparing and analyzing municipal financial reports
• Planning a municipal budgeting and reporting cycle
• Contributing to strategic planning
• Contributing and preparing capital planning and financing

Module 3: Financial Administration

• Understanding municipal financial records
• Costing principles in municipal operating and service-based costing
• Budgeting principles in a municipality
• Income expenditure within a multi-year framework
• Cash and investment management techniques
• Risk management in finance
• Internal control and legislation

Module 4: Fiscal Relations

• Municipal finance management Act
• National government as a source of municipal revenue
• Major sources of municipal taxes, licenses, and fees
• Ordinary revenue collection
• Municipal population and revenue estimation techniques
• Average per capita spending
• Budget controlling

Module 5: Building Essential Financial Infrastructure

• Accommodating the collected revenue
• Incidence of surplus and deficit in municipal finance
• Municipal spending categorization
• Growth rates and municipal population recording
• Public work spending per capita
• Loans as a percentage of municipal revenues
• Municipal revenue per capita

Module 6: Understanding Municipal Fiance 

• Current and emerging municipal finance issues
• Asset foundation principles economic principles
• Internal control and evaluation
• Performance management
• Auditing and planning implementation
• Policies affecting municipal financial management

Module 7: Order and Progress: Making Investments

• Debt services as a three-year average revenues
• Loans authorization
• Public health spending
• Public school spending as a percentage of municipal spending
• Sample of subvention requests
• Changes in property values
• Debt growth
• Investments evaluation

Module 8: Core Components of Finance

• Standards of municipal finance
• Legislation governing municipal finance
• Application of Ethics in a municipal environment
• Conducting stakeholder consultation
• Handling unauthorized expenditures that occur
• The role of the council
• Special adjustment to the tabled budget
• Financial committees
• Recovering unauthorized expenditure
• Irregular and wasteful expenditure
• The budget and treasury office
• Preparing competency regulations