Built for Cambodian NGOs: compliance, donors, and field teams
One platform for staff records, field attendance, donor-compliant procurement, expense claims, and project budget tracking.
Coding every cost to a donor, not just to an account
A Cambodian NGO does not have one set of books; it has one per grant, and every one of them has to reconcile to the same bank balance. A single fuel purchase might be 60% one donor, 30% another and 10% core. If that split is decided in a spreadsheet after the fact, it is not evidence — it is a reconstruction, and a donor auditor will treat it as one. Humaneti puts the project and cost-centre split on the purchase request itself, before the money is committed. The person raising the request chooses the grant, the approval routes according to that grant's rules, and every downstream record — the purchase order, the expense claim, the asset, the payslip allocation — carries the same coding without anyone re-entering it.
Burn rate you can see before the quarter closes
The two failures that cost NGOs their next grant are overspending a budget line and underspending one. Both are visible months in advance and both are usually discovered at the quarterly report, because commitments live in people's heads until an invoice arrives. Humaneti treats an approved purchase request as a commitment against the budget line immediately, not when it is paid. A programme manager looking at a grant sees three numbers: spent, committed, and remaining — so a line that will overrun in month eight is obvious in month five, while there is still time to request a reallocation rather than explain a variance.
Field attendance from a province with one bar of signal
Programme staff are not at a desk with a fingerprint reader. They are at a commune office, a school, or a field site where mobile data is intermittent and the nearest office is two hours away. Paper timesheets travel back to Phnom Penh at the end of the month, which is why NGO payroll is chronically late and why leave balances are always disputed. Humaneti records attendance from a phone browser with the location stamped at the point of check-in, and a field coordinator approves for their own team rather than everything funnelling to one HR officer in the capital. The consequence for payroll is the part that matters: the month closes on time because the data was already in by the time anyone started counting.
Three quotes, a threshold, and the file that proves it
Almost every institutional donor sets procurement thresholds: below one figure a single quote is fine, above it three are required, above another a committee must sit. The rule is rarely the problem. The problem is proving eighteen months later that it was followed on a specific purchase, when the quotes were emailed to someone who has since left. Humaneti enforces the threshold as configuration — the request cannot advance without the number of quotes that grant requires — and keeps the attachments on the request record itself, so the audit trail is assembled as the work happens rather than reconstructed under deadline.
Advances taken in cash, liquidated with evidence
Field activities run on cash advances, and cash advances are where NGO finance teams lose their month-end. A coordinator draws an advance for a three-day training in Battambang, comes back with a bag of receipts, and someone reconciles it by hand against a budget line that has moved since. Humaneti tracks the advance as an outstanding balance against the person, not just a payment, and the expense claim that liquidates it references the same project coding the advance was issued under. Anything unliquidated past its due date is visible as a list rather than a surprise, which is usually enough to fix the behaviour without a new policy.
Staff time split across four grants, defensibly
A programme officer paid 40% from one grant, 35% from another and the rest from core funds is normal in Cambodian NGOs, and it is the single line most likely to be challenged in an audit — because the percentage is usually a budget assumption rather than a record of where the time went. The distinction matters: a donor will accept an allocation supported by approved timesheets and reject the identical number when the only backing is the budget it came from. Humaneti derives the split from time actually recorded and approved, keeps it against the payroll run, and produces the per-person per-grant figure as a report rather than a spreadsheet somebody rebuilds each quarter. When the allocation changes mid-year because a grant closes, the change carries a date and the months either side stay correct.
Equipment a donor still owns
Assets bought with grant funds usually come with conditions that outlive the grant: they must be tagged, tracked, sometimes handed to a local partner at closure, and always accounted for at the end. In practice a laptop bought under a 2023 project is on a desk in a provincial office three grants later, and nobody can say which budget line paid for it. Humaneti records the funding source on the asset at the point of purchase, because the purchase request already carried the coding, and keeps the custodian and location current as the item moves. At project closure the disposal or handover list is a report, and the question of what a grant bought and where it is now has an answer that does not depend on institutional memory.
What a donor auditor asks for, and where it comes from
- The approval chain for a specific purchase, with dates and named approvers — from the purchase request record.
- Evidence that the quote threshold was met — the attachments held on that same request.
- Payroll cost allocated to the grant, per person per month — from the payroll run's project split.
- Timesheets supporting that allocation — from field attendance, already approved by the coordinator.
- The asset register for equipment bought with grant funds, including where each item now is.
Problems we hear about
Donor audits expose gaps in procurement records
Field staff attendance is tracked on paper across provinces
Cash advances and expense claims pile up at month-end
What changes with Humaneti
- Donor-ready audit trail on every approval
- Mobile-first attendance for field and province teams
- Project-level budget and donor tracking
Recommended modules
Cambodia procurement software for purchase requests, quotations, approvals, purchase orders, goods received, vendor control, and budget checks.
Expense claim software Cambodia teams use to submit receipts, approve claims, reconcile cash advances, reimburse staff, and keep donor audit records.
Project and donor tracking software for Cambodia NGOs, linking grants, budgets, purchases, and expense claims in one ERP workflow.
Humaneti Payroll software for Cambodia handles salary runs, tax, payslips, loans, and approval workflows for SMEs and NGOs.
A practical rollout path
- 1
Map the current NGOs process, owners, records, and control gaps
- 2
Configure shared people, organization, project, budget, and role context
- 3
Roll out the highest-priority workflows with approvals and evidence
- 4
Measure adoption, exceptions, cycle time, and reporting readiness
Talk to our team
Get a walkthrough tailored to your operations.