The Students’ Union is a registered charity. That means we are bound financially by Charity Law and have procedures in place for accessing and tracking society payments. Here are the key points you always need to remember:

• You can only use your society bank account for society activity. Using a private bank account to fund society activity, take profit for a society activity or hold society money is in breach of Charity Law
• You should always complete a Student Group Activity Booking Form to correspond with society payments
• A society's Vice President is primarily responsible for budgeting for society activities, making society payments, generating income and completing funding applications

Societies have two bank accounts:

Your Grant Account holds NTSU funding which can be applied for through a bidding process. Funds in this account must be spent on what they were allocated for

Your Society Account holds money generated by your society through memberships, fundraising, sponsorship or similar. Funds in this account can be spent on any society activity or items the committee feel would benefit their group

Once you are ready - Submit a Payment Request. This is the only way you can access the money in your society's accounts and all transactions must go through the form.

This form can normally only be submitted by the President or Vice President of that society. If you have any issues getting your President or Vice President to submit this from, please contact opportunities@su.ntu.ac.uk. For more information about the funding and finance process please complete your Online Training and consult the Finance & Funding Guide below.

Requests are processed every Tuesday and should be completed by the President or Vice President. It is important to consider the following things:

Type of Payment

Payment requests can be used for any type of payment. It is important you select the right payment and upload evidence so that this can be processed quickly:

A reimbursement via BACS transfer

If a committee member pays for something for the society, they can be reimbursed directly from the society account by providing the bank details of the person receiving the reimbursement and uploading a receipt as evidence. If you are making multiple payment requests to the same account, you should group these together into one request. Remember to keep evidence of your physical and digital receipts to use as proof. Without a receipt which shows your purchase and total, you cannot be reimbursed.

Upload an invoice

You can directly pay a company from your society account by requesting an invoice. You need to make sure the invoice is made out to your society, includes NTSU’s address, and the name and bank details of the recipient. If a company asks for a Purchase Order number contact the Opportunities Coordinator to generate this for you.

Online order

You can place an order to be charged directly to your society account. Please provide full details and online links for what you want to be ordered, and consider delivery time alongside the time it may take for your opportunities coordinator to make the order. If in doubt, contact the opportunities team to let them know more about your request after sending it in.

Spending Society Money

Your society’s money must be spent on activity that benefits your group as a whole. Payment requests will not be approved if:

• You do not have enough money in your account
• You were not allocated funding for the request (Grant Account only)
• They do not relate to society activity
• They are for committee expenses e.g. hoodies or personalised items 
• They are for the direct purchase of alcohol 

The Vice President is responsible for generating income for your society and for completely funding applications.

For further help and guidance completing your funding application and other areas of finance, please see the Finance and Funding Guidance document.

If you are receiving sponsorship from an external company, the terms of this agreement should be reflected in the societies sponsorship contract which needs to be signed by the company, the Opportunities Department and your society. Societies must not enter into any financial agreements without prior authorisation from NTSU.

If you would like to know how much your society account has in it, please contact opportunities@su.ntu.ac.uk .

Please note it can take up to 2 weeks from when your payment request form is approved for the change to show on our system. That means this balance could be up to 4 weeks out of date in term time and 6 weeks out of date in non-term time.

To help you keep a closer eye on your finances, we would advise that you use the Society Account Tracker. This document can help you keep up to date and track the spend of your societies money!