To ensure successful unit operation, the IEEE Member and Geographic Activities (MGA) sub-organization requires all Sections and Subsections to annually submit reports of their officers, events, and financial operations during the past year. Timely submission of these reports is a condition for a Section or Subsection to qualify for a rebate payment. To be eligible for the annual rebate, each Section or Subsection must
- Submit financial reporting through the NextGen financial platform,
- Confirm that there are active Executive Committee Officers via vTools, and
- Report at least 5 events from the prior year via vTools.
These reports have different deadlines set for them (see below). Sections completing all their reports early by the third Friday of February of each year receive a 10% bonus payment on top of their base rebate payment.
At the same time, Sections not meeting the reporting deadlines face a 10% penalty applied to the rebate and the payment of the rebate being placed at the discretion of the Region 8 Director. Sections not filing required reports at all are automatically placed on probation and lose their rebate for the current year.
Our goal is to ensure that all Sections and Subsections in Region 8 achieve a 100% submission rate for all required reports until the respective reporting deadlines. In addition, all Sections and Subsections are encouraged to qualify for the 10% rebate bonus by submitting their reports early.
During the reporting season at the beginning of each year, the Region 8 Sections Vitality and Development Committee (SVD) supports the Sections and Subsections in Region 8 in resolving any problems that might arise in conjunction with the annual reporting process. In addition, we supply advice to newly beginning Section Treasurers and other Section Officers to facilitate successful Section operation. This process is supported by the Region 8 Finance Committee helping with any issues related to financial reporting.
The following sections give an overview of the different reporting requirements. For detailed information please refer to IEEE Geographic Unit Required Reporting & Rebates
Financial Reporting
All Sections and Subsections must submit annual financial reports covering all their financial transactions for a given year along with financial compliance information. Unlike the other reporting processes, the financial reporting process for Sections and Subsections is different.
The responsibility of reporting financial activity of both Sections and Subsections lies with the Treasurer of the respective unit. Depending on the organization of accounts held by the Section or Subsection and its subunits (Subsections, Chapters, and/or Affinity Groups), the Treasurer might also be responsible to perform the financial reporting on behalf of those subunits.
To perform the actual reporting, Section treasurers use the financial reporting process outlined in the following paragraphs. Subsections perform their financial reporting through the Treasurer of their parent organizational unit. For all Subsections in Region 8, this parent unit is either the Section to which the Subsection belongs, the Africa Council for all Subsections on the African Continent, or – in all other cases – Region 8 directly. Subsection Treasurers should liaise with the Treasurer of their respective parent unit regarding the reporting.
The deadline to submit reports to demonstrate that the requirement has been fulfilled for a given year is 28th February of the following year. To fulfil the requirement, all accounts registered to the Section need to have all relevant data entered into the financial management system and their reconciliation by HQ staff must have been requested. In addition, the compliance documents for all accounts must have been uploaded. Typically, this means filing reports for multiple accounts as many Sections operate on multiple accounts in parallel (e.g., an IEEE concentration banking account and a local national bank account).
For the majority of Sections in Region 8, the financial reporting of the Section includes all financial activities of its subunits (Subsections, Chapters, and/or Affinity Groups). There is a small number of Sections having Chapters operating their own separate bank accounts managed independently of the Section. In those cases, the Section Treasurer only includes the financial activity of the subunits not having their own accounts in the Section report while the respective subunit Treasurers report on behalf of their subunits directly to the IEEE HQ using the same web portals as the Section Treasurers.
Starting with the financial reporting for the year 2021, IEEE changed its reporting platform from the old NetSuite system to the new NextGen platform. At the time of this writing, the new financial management system is still in its introduction phase, so many details are still subject to change. Independently of the financial reporting platform, compliance documents must be submitted annually via the MGA Compliance Documents portal.
Due to the transition phase between financial management systems, reporting financial activity is currently performed using Excel spreadsheet-based Bank Upload Templates. Templates tailored to each individual Section are distributed by MGA staff to Section Treasurers. Missing templates can be requested by contacting the IEEE Finance team at [email protected].
The templates come with step-by-step instructions. Essentially, most transaction details can be copied over from electronic bank statements or accounting software directly into the Excel templates. The only manual addition needed is assigning an appropriate expense or revenue type code to each transaction. Please note that the reporting has to be done using the provided Excel spreadsheet templates. It is not possible to use custom spreadsheets or simply provide bank statements.
The completed spreadsheets should be sent to [email protected] to upload the transactions into the accounting system. When the upload is completed successfully, the transactions should appear in the financial management system. After sending the spreadsheet, it might take a few days for the uploaded data to become available as the import requires manual work at the IEEE HQ.
Experience shows that the annual financial report is the most complex of the three required reports and is the part most prone to difficulties as the local banking systems in many Region 8 countries are not 100% compatible with the US banking system that the financial regulations of the IEEE are based on. Please start preparing the financial report well in advance of the deadline to account for unexpected difficulties.
In the event of any difficulties or questions, please feel free to get in touch with the Region 8 Section Vitality and Development Committee and/or with the Region 8 Finance Committee. We are happy to help with any issues surrounding the financial reporting.
For detailed information on financial reports please refer to Financial Reporting.
Officer Reporting
Officers of all Sections and Subsections must be reported using vTools Officer Reporting. Typically, the annual officer reporting is the least time-consuming of the three reports and should be done whenever new officers are elected or appointed. In the case of elected officers, the names of newly elected officers must be reported within 20 days following the election.
The responsibility of reporting officers of Sections and Subsections typically lies with the Secretary of the respective unit but may alternatively be performed by other executive committee members as well. The deadline to demonstrate that the requirement has been fulfilled for a given year is 15th March of the current year. At that deadline, there must be active officers reported for the key offices in the Section or Subsection to fulfill the requirement.
Please note that officers are reported with both start and end dates of their respective terms. As soon as an entered end date of a position elapses, the office is considered vacant for the purpose of the officer reporting. Please keep this in mind if an officer gets reelected or reappointed to update the end date of their term accordingly.
Similarly, please keep in mind that certain offices have got eligibility requirements. If these are violated, an officer report might get rejected and the respective office might stay vacant.
For detailed information on officer reports please refer to IEEE Geographic Unit Reporting – New Officers and Officer Changes.
Event Reporting
Meeting activity of all Sections and Subsections must be reported using vTools Events. Entering event information into the web portal automatically feeds the data into the internal activity statistics. You can also schedule future events rather than wait to report them at the end of the year. Scheduled events are visible in IEEE Collabratec, myIEEE, and the IEEE Event Finder mobile app which might give the events additional publicity.
The responsibility of reporting meeting activity of Sections and Subsections typically lies with the Secretary of the respective unit but may be delegated or shared between multiple volunteers. The Secretary should also make sure that any subunits (Subsections, Chapters, and/or Affinity Groups) have submitted their respective reports.
The minimum number of reported events required for a Section or Subsection to qualify for a rebate payment is 5 meetings per year. The deadline to submit reports to demonstrate that the requirement has been fulfilled for a given year is 15th March of the following year.
Chapter and/or Affinity Group meetings may be counted in fulfilling Section or Subsection meeting requirements. Similarly, administrative meetings of the Section volunteers count towards the minimum requirement. Although the COVID pandemic still makes it harder to organize meaningful activities in many countries, the minimum number of 5 events is still a hard requirement to get any form of rebate payment. However, activities counting towards the requirement do not need to take place physically; virtual Section events and meetings do count towards the requirement as well.
It is worthwhile to report all meetings held by a Section or Subsection and not limit the reports to the required minimum. Sections, Subsections, and their subunits reporting more meetings than the required minimum might be eligible for activity bonuses paid on top of the regular rebate payment. Please see Geographic Unit Rebate Schedule for details.
For detailed information on meeting reports please refer to Meeting Reporting.
prepared by Andreas Koltes
v1.1 (29.3.2022)