Abstract:
The field attachment was conducted in Busitema University within a period of two months. The main services provided by the Busitema University included registration of business enterprise, community development work in terms of sensitization about malaria, parish development model data gathering and revenue collection. As internee had to participate in all these critical activities. In the first week of arrival, the main activity was Induction or Orientation to the workplace and to fellow interns. This allowed me to understand the nature of the team members I had to work with but it also fostered better cohesion. As team members we became accustomed to accomplishing our assigned tasks for the week but also in conducting simple administrative duties. The key task assigned to me out of many others was entering payments in the Integrated Financial Management System (IFMS), which made me to learn how to use the system and also update it. In terms of accountancy, tasks revolved around source documents filling in, transferring the information into the vote book and analysing how they were spending in regards to the votes. A key challenge which I encountered was when there was power load shedding which interrupted processing of payments using the IFMS. Lack of electricity caused delays in sanctioning payments. The recommendations to students doing internship is that they should read about key aspects of government accounting prior to going to the field, this will help them acclimatize to the records much faster, and to the university, in particular the lecturers who teach accounting there is need to train students also on how to prepare reports using the IFMS which is now being widely used.
