Petty Cash & Staff Advances

Petty cash in AWRA is run on the imprest model. Each cash box is a float with a name, a level it is topped back up to, and optionally a custodian (the person who holds the box), a branch and a currency. Creating a float creates a dedicated asset account in your chart of accounts, named after the float, and the float’s balance is that account’s balance read straight from the journal. There is no second running total kept beside it, which is the whole point: the box on the shelf and the books cannot drift apart because there is only one number. You will find the floats under Accounting, Journal, then Petty Cash in the accounting sidebar, or from the Accounting quick actions.

Three figures appear on every float, and each answers a different question. Balance is what the account holds. Available is the balance less any payments still waiting for approval, so two vouchers queued at the same time cannot spend the same shillings. To top up is the float level less the balance; topping up by exactly that amount restores the float to its level, and it is offered as the default on the top-up form. When you set up a float you can also enter an opening top-up and the bank or cash account it came from. That first top-up posts immediately, without waiting for approval, so the box can pay its first voucher the same day.

In practice: a clinic in Nakuru sets up a Front Office float with a level of KES 20,000, funded by an opening top-up from its main bank account. After a week of fuel, stationery and courier vouchers the balance reads KES 6,500, and one KES 2,000 payment for a plumber is still waiting for approval. The float now shows a balance of KES 6,500, available of KES 4,500 (because the pending KES 2,000 is already spoken for) and a top-up due of KES 13,500. The accountant tops up exactly KES 13,500 from the bank, the balance returns to KES 20,000, and the ledger shows every shilling that left the box against the expense account it was spent on.

Every movement of cash in or out of a box is a numbered voucher of one of two kinds. A payment out of the box carries the date, payee, description, amount and the expense account it was spent on, and can be tagged to a department and a project; you attach a photo or PDF of the receipt (PDF, JPG, PNG, WEBP or HEIC, up to 10 MB), which is stored privately and opens only for people allowed to view petty cash. A top-up into the box records the money put in and the bank or cash account it came from. A payment posts a debit to the expense account and a credit to the float’s account; a top-up debits the float and credits the source account. Each entry carries the voucher’s department and project and the float’s branch, so petty spending lands correctly on a department or branch income statement.

Approval is a switch in Settings, Accounting Defaults, and it is off by default because a one-person office has nobody else to approve. With it on, every new voucher waits as pending and nothing posts until it is approved, under two rules: the person who recorded a voucher cannot approve it, and a pending payment already counts against what the box has available. A rejected voucher keeps its reason and posts nothing. Dates matter too: a voucher dated in a closed month is refused, but a voucher dated in an open month that was closed while it waited for approval still goes through on approval, and its entry lands on the first open day.

In practice: the guards catch the classic mistakes. A cashier at a Mombasa branch tries to move KES 5,000 from the shop float to the warehouse float by recording a payment — refused, because a payment must go to an expense account; the right move is a top-up on the receiving float from the account the money actually came from. Someone else tries to top a float up from itself — refused. A KES 8,000 payment against a box with KES 4,500 available is refused with the amount the box still holds, so the custodian tops up first. And the till drawer’s small spending belongs here, not in Expenses, which is for bills owed or paid from the bank.

A staff advance (many organizations call it imprest) is cash given to a named member of staff for a trip, an event or field work, which they later clear with receipts and any cash they hand back. Until it is cleared it is money owed by a person, and the ledger shows it that way. Finance works from Accounting, Journal, then Staff Advances in the sidebar. An advance starts as a request naming the member of staff, the purpose and the amount, optionally with a department and project, and every advance gets its own number. If approval is switched on in Accounting Defaults it then waits for approval; otherwise it is approved as soon as it is raised. It can be rejected, with a reason, at any point before it is issued.

Issuing the money is the moment the advance posts. You pick the bank, cash or petty cash account it was paid from and the date, and AWRA debits Staff Advances and credits that account. Issuing also sets the retire-by date: the issue date plus the number of days set in Accounting Defaults, 14 unless you change it. If the advance is issued from a petty cash float, it appears on that float as a payment voucher instead, so the box’s own list explains where its money went, and an advance larger than what the box has available is refused. Dating an issue in a closed month is refused like any other posting.

In practice: a community health NGO in Kitui sends a field officer on a three-day outreach. Finance raises an advance of KES 45,000 tagged to the Outreach department and the Maternal Health project, it is approved by the programme manager, and on 3 March it is issued from the main bank account. The ledger now shows KES 45,000 owed by that officer on the Staff Advances account, the retire-by date is 17 March, and the advance carries its department and project onto every later entry — so the project’s spending is visible from the day the cash leaves, not weeks later when receipts arrive.

Retiring an advance is accounting for the money. The member of staff, or finance on their behalf, records one line per receipt — what it was spent on, the expense account, the amount and a photo or PDF of the receipt — plus any cash handed back and the account it went into. Each receipt line can carry its own department and project. You can retire in more than one go; whatever is not yet accounted for stays outstanding. The retirement debits each expense line and the account the returned cash went into, and credits Staff Advances up to what is still outstanding. Returning more cash than is outstanding is refused with the amount still open shown.

Two endings settle what is left. If the person spent more than they were given, the excess is credited to Staff Reimbursements Payable — it is now owed to them — and paying them out is one step, debiting that account and crediting the bank or cash account you paid from. If part of an advance will never come back, somebody with approval rights writes it off to the expense account they choose, crediting Staff Advances for whatever is outstanding; you cannot write off your own advance, and a write-off waits until any pending retirement has been approved or rejected. Staff Advances and Staff Reimbursements Payable are kept by the advance itself, so choosing either on a receipt line is refused — a receipt charged to the advance account would clear it on paper while the ledger still showed it owed.

In practice: the Kitui field officer returns with receipts for KES 31,200 of fuel and KES 16,300 of venue and refreshments, KES 47,500 in all against an advance of KES 45,000. Retirement debits Fuel KES 31,200 and Meetings KES 16,300, credits Staff Advances KES 45,000 (clearing it) and credits Staff Reimbursements Payable KES 2,500. Finance then reimburses the KES 2,500 by M-Pesa from the cash account. Had the officer spent only KES 40,000, they would have handed back KES 5,000 recorded on the same retirement, and the advance would close at zero with nothing owed either way.

With approval switched on, both the advance and each retirement wait for somebody with the approve permission, and two people are always excluded: whoever raised it, and the member of staff it is for. The second rule holds whatever role that person has — even an administrator cannot approve the receipts for their own advance — because the person holding the money has the strongest reason to approve their own receipts, and that is the one control imprest exists to provide. Permissions are split four ways: view staff advances, manage staff advances (raise for anyone, issue, retire and reimburse), approve staff advances (approve or reject, and write off), and request staff advances.

A member of staff who holds only the request permission sees My Advances in the accounting sidebar and the Accounting quick actions instead of the finance list. There they can request an advance and retire it with receipts, but only for the employee record linked to their login — they cannot raise one for anyone else. If the page says the login is not linked to an employee record, HR has to link the user to the employee record first. Petty cash has its own three permissions in parallel: view (floats, vouchers and receipts), manage (create floats and record vouchers) and approve (approve or reject pending vouchers).

In practice: a Kampala distributor gives its sales reps the request permission only. A rep requests KES 60,000 for a regional trade fair from My Advances, finance issues it from the bank, and after the fair the rep photographs each receipt into the retirement. The regional manager, who holds the approve permission, signs off the retirement; the rep could not approve it even if they were later given the approve permission. Finance never re-types a receipt, and the rep never sees anyone else’s advances.

An issued advance with money still outstanding after its retire-by date is marked overdue. Every morning AWRA emails the member of staff, copying the person who raised it, with the amount outstanding and how many days late it is. Each advance is reminded at most once every three days, so a slow retirement is chased steadily without flooding anyone’s inbox, and nobody in finance has to keep a spreadsheet of who owes what.

At the top of the Staff Advances list, finance sees an ageing summary in five buckets: not yet due, then 1–30, 31–60, 61–90 and over 90 days late. That strip is the month-end conversation in one line — the older buckets are where write-off decisions and difficult conversations live. Because every issue and retirement is a posting, an advance also respects the period lock: dating an issue or a retirement in a closed month is refused, and a retirement that was waiting for approval when its month closed still posts on approval, on the first open day.

In practice: at the end of June a school in Eldoret has KES 380,000 in advances outstanding. The ageing strip shows KES 210,000 not yet due, KES 140,000 1–30 days late and KES 30,000 over 90 days late on one teacher who has since left. The bursar lets the reminders work on the 1–30 bucket, which typically clears within a week as receipts come in, and asks the head to write off the KES 30,000 to staff welfare expense after HR confirms it cannot be recovered — a decision recorded with its reason rather than an unexplained balance carried into the next year.