Photo By 1st Lt. Latoray Washington | Spc. Joshua Rawlins, a Commander's Emergency Response Program cell clerk, and native...... read more read more
CAMP LIBERTY, Iraq - With only four months in the window ahead, Charlie Detachment, 101st Financial Management Company, 10th Sustainment Brigade Troops Battalion, 10th Sustainment Brigade, continues to makes progress and make our mission a little easier.
As some of you may know, Charlie Detachment operates the Commander's Emergency Response Program disbursing office on Camp Liberty. The Commander's Emergency Response Program disbursing office trains paying agents to disburse funds to support the Armed Forces. Not only do we support the Armed Forces, but we support the Iraqi and other coalition forces also. These particular agents pay for everything from Rewards money to projects to improve the standards of towns, businesses and the economy in the country of Iraq.
The Soldiers of Charlie Detachment do an outstanding job to maintain records tracking the payments made from this office as well as the amount of cash given to each paying agent and received back from them. The issue that has arisen in the past is the difference in tracking the money between the finance companies and the budget office.
The budget office tracks a project while the finance companies track a paying agent. This can cause a bit of confusion when questions arise on a specific project. The person inquiring would have to know the paying agent that was assigned to the project in order to get information on their activities for that project. The method of tracking what was funded to a paying agent in the past has always been to keep a copy of the purchase request and commitment from the budget office. This states the project information and amount committed with a handwritten amount on it for how much was drawn. There was no electronic method of tracking the amount drawn against a project.
"It can be confusing at times trying to keep up with what a particular agent has drawn on all 20 to 30 projects" says 1st Lt. Latoray Washington, disbursing agent from West Helena, Ark. This left the finance companies vulnerable to over-disbursements on projects.
In an attempt to prevent both fraud and accidental over payment, Sgt. Jennifer Evrett, an Exeter, Calif. native and CERP cell certifier, has created a database using Microsoft Access that allows tracking of the paying agent as well as the projects. It will allow each disbursing agent to verify the amount drawn, spent, and returned for each agent and each project as opposed to just the paying agent. It is a database needed but had not been created prior to this point. It will allow for more accurate tracking of the amount of money given out to the agents and for what projects the funds are specified for. "This has definitely made life a whole lot easier" says Evrett.
Below is a snapshot of the actual database. This database will soon be implemented throughout 208th Financial Management Company to all disbursing agents.
| Date Taken: | 03.20.2009 |
| Date Posted: | 03.20.2009 07:27 |
| Story ID: | 31366 |
| Location: | BAGHDAD, IQ |
| Web Views: | 236 |
| Downloads: | 212 |
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