Not all aspects of this plan will be relevant in some contexts. In other contexts it may be necessary to expand this into multiple management plans.

Projects that are part of a programme may not need to perform investment appraisal or establish funding. Major infrastructure programmes may need to develop a management plan for funding that is separate to the management plan for financial control.

Policy

• Introduction

• The introduction will describe the background to the work and make it clear how this document relates to other relevant documents, such as a scope management plan or policies of the host organisation, parent programme or portfolio.

• Roles and responsibilities

• Allocation of responsibility for finance management may range from the project manager in smaller projects to a dedicated team of specialists in a large programme or portfolio. This section of the management plan must clearly describe which roles have which responsibilities for financial management.
  

  It will also show paths of escalation and communication within the P3 organisation structure.

• Information management

• The composition and format of financial reports such as cash flows, funding schedules or management accounts will be described.

• Assurance

• The criteria for successful finance management that will be used in any assurance reviews will be described.

• Budget

• Any expenditure attributable to finance management should be noted here, such as centrally provided accounting resources or specialist software.

• Interfaces

• All aspects of the work will need funding. Interfaces will show how costs are aggregated from different aspects of the work.

Procedure

• Estimate costs

• Estimating can be conducted in a variety of ways according to the context of the work and the progression of the life cycle. The approach to estimating costs, sources of information and techniques to be used should all be defined.

• Investment appraisal

• Investment appraisal techniques vary as do the parameters that can be applied. As a project or programme becomes larger there may be multiple instances of investment appraisal being applied. It is important that the approach is consistent and well defined.

• Establish funding

• It may be that funding is in place before the point where management plans are developed. It may also be the case, on larger projects or programmes, that the acquisition of funding is phased throughout the life cycle. If that is the case this section should describe the procedures to do this.

• Develop budget

• This section should describe how budgeting should be performed and how it should be maintained as progress is recorded. The approach to contingency reserves and management reserves should also be defined here.

• Financial control

• Only the largest of projects or programmes will be independent of corporate accounting systems. Financial information must often be extracted from corporate systems that are more tuned to business-as-usual than project or programme work. This section will explain how that situation is to be managed.
  

  It will also contain levels of authority for approving expenditure and tolerances that should be applied to financial plans.