Annex 3: Disclosure for Flexible Appropriation Forms
Section 45B of the PFA requires departmental annual reports to include a statement of actual expenses and capital expenditure incurred against each appropriation administered by the department, and each class of outputs included in each output expense appropriation.
The 2004 PFA amendments mean there are a number of flexible appropriation forms available. Suggested reporting practices for each of these are detailed below.
Multi-class output expense appropriations (MCOA)
Multi-class output appropriations allow departments the flexibility of having one appropriation across a number of output classes. To maintain transparency, the PFA requires departments to report on actual expenses for each output class within a MCOA, as well as reporting actual expenses for the entire appropriation.
Multi-year appropriation (MYA)
Multi-year appropriations give departments flexibility to manage expenses over a number of years. Readers will want to know how much has been spent over the financial year, as well as how total expenditure is tracking against the total appropriation. Departments should therefore report the following figures:
- amount of total appropriation
- actual expenses or expenditure incurred over the period covered by the annual report
- expenses or expenditure forecast for the period covered by the annual report
- total actual expenses or expenditure incurred from the start of the MYA to the end of the period covered by the annual report, and
- the period of the MYA.
Expenses restricted by revenue and department to department appropriations
As with other appropriations, departments are required to report actual expenses against forecast levels of expenditure. Because the appropriation for these items is limited by the amount of revenue earned, departments must also report the level of revenue earned for that particular output class as part of the disclosure in the annual report.
The PFA requires disclosure in an annual report to be by appropriation rather than by output class. An output class can be associated with more than one appropriation - an output class may have an appropriation for expense restricted by revenue (RDA) or a department to department appropriation (DDA), in addition to an annual appropriation. In this situation, departments are required to separately report expenses incurred against each appropriation in the output class.
