Financial policies and procedures
The Finance Committee of Council supervises accounting and audit, annual payments of NMO contributions, realization of royalties and other revenues, and annual financial reports. IIASA is also legally obliged under the Austrian Association Act and Austrian commercial law to have its accounts externally audited every year (latest audited accounts for 2016 link pending). Until 2015, auditing of the annual accounts was carried out by PriceWaterhouseCoopers, this has now changed to BDO Austria who will audit IIASA’s statutory financial statements for 2016.
In addition, some external funders mandate that the projects they contribute to be individually audited. The European Commission (EC), a major contributor to the institute’s external funding, also sometimes performs second-level audits on already externally audited EC projects. To date three major second-level audits have been carried out on nine projects in 2009, 2011, and 2015. The next second-level audit will take place in early April 2017.
At IIASA financial policies and procedures are in place for:
- sponsored research and budgeting for a proposal (sections 4.4.7 and 4.4.8 of the IIASA Operating Procedures and Policies).
- procurement, business travel, holding conferences, and visits from external collaborators and stakeholders (section 4.4 of the IIASA Operating Procedures and Policies).
- budget planning and oversight process as shown in the diagram below (section 4.4.2 in IIASA Operating Procedures and Policies).
The procedures and approval processes are facilitated and documented through the IIASA management information system.
