Need Help - Finance Admin Section Chief

[majdomke]

I'm about to work a SAREX as a FASC (Finance Admin Section Chief) Trainee but there will be no trainer apart from the IC. I was hoping there would be a full-fledged FASC above me teaching me the way to do it. I do have several years of Finance Officer experience at the squadron level and have done ES for more than 7 years. The past few years I've had to work mission base due to health reasons. I even took a hands-on class for Unified Command taught by FEMA where I worked as a Cost Unit Leader. My concern is that I really don't like doing things half-right and want to spend the next few weeks preparing to be the best FASC I can be. Any help and direction would be greatly appreciated. One of the things I liked at my FEMA training was the use of a computer program for tracking all the finances. It was a proprietary program and I'm frankly surprised CAP hasn't developed such a tool to be used CAP-wide. If anyone has a spreadsheet or other tool they use to perform this function I would greatly appreciate you sending to me. Thank you all for your assistance. Perhaps others like me will search this forum in the future and find the help they need based on the responses given here.

[Al Sayre]

Have you looked at the Finance section in WIMRS?  that's where you need to be tracking all the costs.  Also be sure you or you Pilots & GTL's upload their fuel receipts on the completion of the sorties.  Those are generally all the finance issues you need to worry about.  Also You cannot use Appropriated (i.e. USAF funds) to buy pizza for the mission base etc. or anything silly like that...  Good luck.

[majdomke]

Have you looked at the Finance section in WIMRS?  that's where you need to be tracking all the costs.  Also be sure you or you Pilots & GTL's upload their fuel receipts on the completion of the sorties.  Those are generally all the finance issues you need to worry about.  Also You cannot use Appropriated (i.e. USAF funds) to buy pizza for the mission base etc. or anything silly like that...  Good luck.

Yes sir, I've looked at WIMRS... the problem is you can't always guarantee you'll have internet access or WIMRS working 100% of the time during the event. It also may be hard to check people in/out by just me. The MSA's will be handling this part and having a spreadsheet or other program that can handle the day-to-day responsibilities and then I can take that data an add to WIMRS as time permits. I'm also like to see some actual training for this position. I was hoping to find a PowerPoint presentation or YouTube video. I'll keep looking but wanted to check with the brain trust here first. Thank you.

[Ed Bos]

Here's a few items you may want to check out:

http://training.fema.gov/emiweb/is/icsresource/assets/tb_finance.pdf

http://training.fema.gov/emiweb/is/icsresource/assets/fasc_pcl.pdf

http://nesa.cap.gov/s/FASC.ppt

http://nesa.cap.gov/ics-curriculum

https://www.osha.gov/SLTC/etools/ics/fin_chief.html

Hope this helps, and cheers!

[Phil Hirons, Jr.]

I'm sure the biggest headache for a FASC for FEMA or any other non-volunteer organization is keeping track / estimating the labor costs of an incident. How much is resource X per hour?

The resources listed all look useful and will give you some ideas of the general duties / processes.

It sounds like you'll be working under the IC. I'd suggest you discuss it with him prior to the SAREX. He might not have had someone in that slot before!