A 4 hour Workshop “Managing Public Money” was conducted in Bangalore on October-5, for Treasurers of Apartment & Villa complexes.
Around 40 Treasurers from various Apartment Complexes along with Chartered Accountants who supervise Society Accounts attended the Workshop.
The Workshop started at 8:30AM with an Inspiring Message by RK Misra for the Treasurers. RK Misra is well known in Bangalore for Governance Reforms, has been part of the Management Committee of almost every Gated Community he has lived in, is a member of Bengaluru Political Action Committee (BPAC), founder of Sahyog – Indian Council for Public Private Partnership, and Co-Founder of Nav Bharat Democratic Party.
The takeaways from RK Misra’s talk were:
1) Treasurers/MC members are already leading their Society, Why not take the next step and lead the Ward. He introduced the BCLIP – Bengaluru Civic Leadership Incubator Program in this context.
2) He mentioned that every Gated Community expects good governance and public service from the Local Corporator/MLA. However, they enforce the “No Visitors Allowed” policy even if the Corporator or MLA wishes to visit the Society.
The Next Session was an attempt to create A Guide for Treasurers : Outline the standards used in various Indian States for Society Accounting, understand the challenges (e.g., challenges around calling “Late Payment Interest” as it is not appreciated by certain communities) faced by Treasurers, and clarify what majority of Societies are following wrt Service Tax, TDS, Income Tax etc.
The Lively Discussions were well rounded with guidance from the Society Auditors present.
This session was followed by a session on “Financial Governance” by Arathi Manay. Arathi brought in her experience of being a President of a 200 Apartment Complex, as well as over-seeing the Finances of one of the most popular lake Trusts of Bangalore.
The resulting discussion was around the various ways that Financial Irregularities can happen in Apartment Associations and the Controls that can be placed to detect and prevent them.
The Treasurer & President of Brigade Metropolis – Anil Agarwal and Anil Danti, the former a CA himself, took stage next.
The learnings from Brigade Metropolis- a 1600 apartments community were many, and served as a great case study of Treasurers with no prior knowledge of Accounting or Financial Governance, doing a great job adding Value to their Public Funds, with their Personal Commitment and a Transparent System.
The Workshop concluded with discussion on ADDA roadmap, and Revenue Generation avenues available to Societies, the utilization of the same in relation to Financial Governance.
If you were there at the workshop, do let us know what you thought about it. If you were not there, please don’t miss it next time. Do check out some feedback below that substantiates our insistence 🙂
