A Finance Banking Officer works for the reputation of himself and his network as follows:

“An org with an FBO makes more money and has a better paid staff and makes it more worthwhile for Flag to manage it than any org ever would without an FBO.”

This reputation is to be earned by the conduct and good sense of the FBO.

Therefore the purposes of the FBO are

1. To make the org make more money

2. To give the org a well-paid staff

3. To make it very worthwhile for Flag to manage and help it.

An FBO must know how to make money.

An FBO must know HOW an org makes money and keeps its reputation with excellent delivery.

An FBO must know the policy expertise used in making money.

An FBO must know that “turning down FPs” plays into the hands of any that wish the org to fail and that forcing in a proper FP allowing for promotion and needful actions is the way to defeat counter-intention in the org.

An FBO must know that expenses incurred in the future beyond the org’s ability to pay must be halted before the expense is incurred, not after the org has been committed.

An FBO must realize that finance control is a primary point of management authority and that this control must not be locally developed to a point where Finance forms a hidden command line, unknown to management or Flag. The FBO has no authority to permit new acquisitions or obligations and no authority to dismiss personnel or cut off obligations without Flag Commanding Officer approval. No one in the entire network from top to bottom has any authority to change operating orders or policy and must obtain such authority for specific cases only from those in actual command, i.e., Commanding Officer of a Continental Liaison Office or the Commanding Officer of the Flag Bureaux as major changes affecting basic planning are command decisions. (Proper, future contracts, staff hiring and dismissals, basic changes in the FP No. 1 of an org, are all command decisions, not to be made in the FBO network. Things that are any future risk at all require authority from the Flag Bureaux.)

An FBO should realize that he is well backed up and that his warnings and suggestions are usually authorized by command channels.

An FBO must realize that one can pass endless regulations regarding finance to block off efforts to escape from old regulations (as witness tax people’s problems), and that all new regulations will also be escaped. The FBO to handle this should work instead to bring understanding and cooperation into the org in matters of finance.

The FBO must know that lack of Word Clearing and hatting will make a financially irresponsible org and must see that Word Clearing on all finance policies occurs both in himself and in the org.

The FBO in doing his duty must work always to earn the reputation set out and postulated at the beginning of this policy letter.