Finance Lead Report to Membership
Presented to GVIAS Meeting on Friday January 23rd, 2010, by Ruby.
January 22, 2010
Finance Lead Report to Membership
This year, we have created a General Ledger of all the financial transactions starting at square one, in March 2008. For financial transparency, I wanted to use software that most of us understood along with a database anyone could maintain. The GL was created using EXCEL software. (*hold up sheets for audience to see). This is so that the Board could figure out what level of detail we need to keep and to keep the financial information in a single spot until we could figure what kind of software would work for our organization and our planned growth.
As the volume of our transactions have grown, this year it is necessary to register for and collect GST. So in addition to ‘financial transparency’ we also now need to create records that the government can audit with financial software approved for that use. We own software called Simply Accounting and our next task is to have this software set up, along with what is called a Chart of Accounts. We will use the information gathered in the General Ledger to set up the Chart of Accounts. It is this that separates our expenses into categories that helps define our Operating Budget each year.
In addition to this financial record keeping, our Board has identified a need to write down Standard Operating Procedures for Finance and Accounting. We have created a filing system for our Records. We now have forms for petty cash and receipt reconciliation and plan to also have a form finalized for Grant Funding before Recompression. We still need to write up instructions on how the forms are used and what information is needed for record keeping to make sure future record keeping is consistent.
Yes, you DO hear me say “still need” and “plan to” … We’d LOVE volunteers to create a Finance Committee to help with the admin work. We plan to hire a Certified Professional to set up the books like I described and to data-enter what we have done so far. I can and will train anyone to maintain the Simply Accounting records and data enter the expenses after that. We will have a Certified Professional make our financial statements for the AGM and for the government as necessary to make sure they are done right and audited periodically.
As Finance Lead, this position probably takes about 6 hours, twice a year (Recomp and BitF) plus about another 6 hours of actual bookkeeping work annually. What we need is folks that like to pay attention to detail in bursts of committed energy – does this sound like you?? If so, c’mon, gimme a HUG and your email addie too!!
Ruby Merriman