Finance & Accounts
Finance and Accounts Department is the nerve centre of all finance-related activities of ARCI. The main task of this department is "budgeting", which starts with planning the financial requirements for the year ahead and is followed by prudent utilization of the funds received. The other activities that revolve around the main objective of budging are (i) investment of idle funds till they are actually spent (ii) accounting of transactions and preparations of year-end financial statements (iii) Auditing of accounts by an external auditor and (iv) obtaining approval of the Governing Council for annual financial statements and submission of the same to DST through the Annual Report.
The sources of funds for ARCI are mainly government grants, technical earnings of the Centre through technology transfers, job works, and prototype sales, characterization services etc. The utilization of the funds is classified into Capital and Revenue expenditure. The Capital expenditure is mainly the planned expenditure for procurement of various capital equipment as well as for enhancement and addition to the infrastructure available. The Revenue expenditure is meant for routine operations of the Centre, like salary & welfare expenses of the employees, electricity, water, security, travel expenses, R&D chemicals and consumables, repairs and maintenance, subscription to journals etc.
The Department is also responsible for drawing and disbursal of salaries & allowances, processing of various personal claims like TA/DA, LTC etc. As far as technical earnings are concerned, the functions include estimating costs of each project, preparation of quotations, submission of proforma invoices and final invoices, and receipts. Statutory compliances in respect of both employee and external party transactions also constitute an important responsibility of this department.
Accounting involves maintenance of the accounting records in line with accounting standards issued by the Institute of Chartered Accountants and the guidelines issued by the principal accounts office of DST. The major aspect of this task is of recoding all financial transactions, monitoring of advances made to staff and external agencies, maintenance of various ledger accounts, capitalization of fixed assets and calculation of depreciation. All these activities culminate in the preparation of annual financial statements.
Another major activity of Finance Department encompasses all the tax related matters like VAT, Service Tax and Income Tax (both TDS and regular Income Tax). It involves filing of regular and periodical returns, getting the assessments completed, collection and remittance of taxes and claiming the set-off of input credits and obtaining refunds wherever due. ARCI is exempted from applicability of Excise duty (both in and out) and from Income Tax u/s 35(1)(ii).
The entire work of the department is computerized and is done online with cross checks for online budget controls and approvals, in terms of delegation of powers in vogue with supporting MIS reports. The varied activities detailed above play a vital role in the functioning of the Centre and provide a data bank for decision making.
