JUNE 2004

Printer Friendly Version

Treasurers Notes

Treasurer's Notes

Roger Stafford, Director, OKI Tri-State Chapter

To prepare for the audit, the treasurer must first assemble:

1. Deposit receipts plus copies of all member checks.
2. Bank Statements
3. Monthly Broker statements plus trade verifications.
4. Member withdrawal reports

Enter all data to 12/31/xx (securities must be valued on 12/31), then.... Reconcile Cash and Shares in Club Accounting (hereafter refered to asCA) with Broker and Bank (hereafter refered to as B&B) statements.If cash and shares do not agree (to the penny!), then somewhere there is an oversight to be corrected. Locating the problem is not difficult when systematically attacked. The first step is to locate the first month when cash in CA differs with the B&B statements - by comparing monthly CA Valuation statements to B&B summaries.

CA has several ways to review previous data entries, and the one I have found most useful is "Reports > Cash Journal Listing". Set the "Report Date" to the end of the first bad month, set the "Start Date" to the beginning of that month, and choose "Combined" to see all cash transactions. Comparing this to the month's B&B statements makes interest and dividend oversights easy to spot. Continue checking to the end of the year.

Occasionally larger differences appear, and one unusual error occurs when a negative number is inadvertently entered, e.g. a $140 check is written and entered in CA as a debit of -140. Unfortunately CA does not trap negative numbers, and converts a -140 debit into a +140 credit! The only way to fix this is the "Edit" the original entry.

When CA and B&B statements agree perfectly, you are ready for the audit committee. The last steps are to run CA's Audit, do a Distribution of Earnings report on 12/31/xx----- and order the tax software! The audit committee will pour over member transactions in great detail, so let them verify that you have credited everyone's contribution.

I recently took over the treasurer's job for my club (all audits were previously completed), and (surprise!) I found that cash did not balance, and hadn't for over two years! My club uses Club Accounting V2.5.11, and has purchased support. What I feared might be a tangled nightmare turned out to be a pussycat. But first let's review the treasurer's and auditors roles.