A Year In The Life as Financial Director

By Rama Aowidah

Hi all! I’m Rama - the current financial director and I present to you less of a day and more of a year in a life. Alas, a day in the life would likely be a quickbooks tutorial and nobody wants that.

Let us begin in a time far far away…..June 2024. Better known to us and you as handover! This was a blissful time as luckily the previous financial directors have a beautiful document with all passwords, Quickbook codes, notion help and more! I hope to give you a similarly stress free time as I’ve put all these into a handy dandy password manager. Alas, the terror of 2FA will always haunt us though so prepare to change over some phone numbers.

NEXT, we have a blissful summer! It is my hope that this will be a time where you can adjust to the role, learn all the key skills and…deal with the bank mandate…

Luckily for you, our committee will have once again come through! I was so prepared for the bank after Jack’s crystal clear instructions, it took all of 5 minutes and bank man was pleased enough to even tell me his own Sex Ed experiences (not good suffice to say).

Many years (a month) later, brings us to September - training weekend! And a couple more months later (apologies for the time skip, but we really do have to get going) brings us to National Conference! This is a time to ensure that speakers get paid and travel gets reimbursed! Hopefully, if we time travel back a bit again, unis will have filled out their reimbursements form and you’ll be all ready for payments. Don’t worry if the odd university has a strangely convoluted payment system - I personally gave up and drafted emails for branches to send to their unions after realising how complicated my own branch’s financial system was. My advice to you would be draft this early on (or just use mine) to help branches have a smoother sailing time on the shores of financial understanding.

Many, many years (2 weeks) later, it hopefully won’t be time for the tax return! Luckily for you, this is not annual. I will therefore be giving no further information - I am sorry I can only infuse so much whimsy into tax returns.

That honestly brings us to the main tasks of a financial director! Of course there’s also keeping quickbooks organised, quarterly reviews to make and trustee meetings to attend, as well as of course writing blog posts…..