NGO ERP donor audit checklist for Cambodia
How Cambodian NGOs can prepare donor audit evidence across procurement, expenses, assets, payroll, and project budgets with one ERP workflow.
Donor audit evidence should be captured during work, not after it
The weakest audit position is trying to rebuild decisions from email, chat, and spreadsheets after a donor asks for evidence. A stronger NGO ERP process captures approvals, attachments, budget references, and review status while the transaction is happening.
Evidence to keep for every donor-funded transaction
- Project, donor, and budget-line reference
- Requester, approver, reviewer, and timestamp history
- Quotation, invoice, receipt, or delivery evidence
- Finance review status and payment or reimbursement record
- Asset custody record when a purchase becomes an asset
The audit-ready operating model
A practical NGO ERP should connect project budgets to purchase requests, expense claims, assets, and payroll. That connection lets teams answer donor questions quickly without rebuilding the story from separate systems.
Where donor evidence is captured automatically
Audit readiness is not a report you run in October. It is a set of checks that already happened, at the moment each transaction was created — here is where each one sits.
- 1Finance
The grant agreement is the source of truth
Donor, period, budget lines, and restriction rules are recorded once against the grant. Everything downstream references that record rather than a project code someone typed by hand.
- 2Humaneti
A grant-funded purchase is checked before it is committed
When a purchase request is submitted against a grant, the grant must be active and the request date must fall inside the grant period. A purchase against a closed or not-yet-started grant is stopped at submission — which is the cheapest possible place to stop it.
- 3Humaneti
Project budget shows commitments, not just spend
An approved-but-unpaid purchase is an open commitment against the project. Availability is budget minus posted spend minus open commitments — so two teams cannot each be told the same money is free.
- 4Humaneti
Competitive sourcing is enforced, not remembered
The amount band decides how many supplier quotes are required, or whether a formal tender applies — and the approval will not go through until they are recorded. Quotes are counted by distinct supplier, so one vendor submitting three quote numbers does not satisfy a three-quote requirement.
- 5Approver
Conflict of interest is a recorded answer
Where the organisation requires it, an approver cannot approve without confirming they have no interest in the vendor — and that confirmation is stored on the approval record, not just asked in a meeting.
- 6Humaneti
Donor restrictions bite at posting time
Two rules are enforced rather than advisory: an expense charged to a grant must map to a donor-approved budget category, and cumulative spend cannot exceed the donor's cap. A posting that breaks either is refused.
- 7Humaneti
Donor-funded assets carry their donor
When a purchase becomes an asset, the donor and grant that funded it are stamped onto the asset record. Restitution reporting at grant close is then a query, not an archaeology project.
The pattern is the same in every case: the control runs at the moment of the transaction, refuses what it must, and leaves a record of having run. That record is the audit evidence — you never have to assemble it.