CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
The term “fund accounting” is as old as the world itself. The origin of fund accounting could be traced to the parable of talents in the holy Bible (Mathew 25: 14-30) about a man who delivered his goods to three of his servants and traveled to a far country two of them traded with their and made profits while the third went and buried his in the ground. When the time for accounting for the fund came they all rendered their accounts for the activities to their master accounting has been defined as a discipline concerned with identifying analysis forecasting of income and expenditure and recording of financial information” generally , it records in monetary terms the flow of economic value between or within entities. The term “fund accounting’s oen associated with either government accounting or non-profit making entities such as clubs societies and churches “ fund” in accounting may connote dierent meanings. In private sector it may be used to describe net current asset (current assets less current liabilities) as when used in the statement of sources and application of funds” it may also be used to describe an asset set aside for particular purpose it may also denote cash or securities.
A very fundamental point to note is that a fund is an accounting entity. A successful organization whether private public profit or non profit making needs to keep proper account of cash inflows and outflows. Therefore the importance of fund accounting in public sector including local government cannot be over-stressed local government by their nature an concerned with the provision of prescribed services at local level and carrying out certain local functions thus the accounts kept by the local governments is designed to,. i. Provide an analysis of the revenue and taxes raised by the local government and; ii. Provide an analysis of the extent to which such revenue has been used in providing each separate service and sub-service for which the local government is responsible. Therefore the accounting procedures must be directed towards ensuring that maximum possible benefit is obtained from the limited resources it owns. The essence of the foregoing is that a local government should be able to demonstrate sound stewardship in the conducts of the financial affairs of the community which is serves. Factually the accounting arrangement of the local government are some times described as stewardship accounting this term dues not however imply and different objectives and emphasis form those of a business organization