Difference between revisions of "Financial Cluster"

Revision as of 00:22, 29 July 2008

Introduction

We've arrived at a point where the various financial cluster stuff that has to get done fits into some convenient frequency categories. In principle, a single person could handle all of the weekly, monthly, yearly, and incidental work. But because we're all volunteers, it helps to spread it out.

Useful Links

• Bike Kitchen Money Flow
• Monthly Accounting Duties
• Register Report

Incidental Duties

I'll start with the incidental, which is managed by the Financial Cluster Coordinator. This is the category that requires the most, um, creativity and responsiveness. The person fulfilling these duties needs ample flexibility to spend BK money and legally sign on behalf of the BK. So this person should be the Treasurer in the corporate sense. The sorts of things that this person does is included in the following list. For more information, see the Financial Cluster Coordinator.

• Being familiar with how the weekly/monthly/yearly jobs work and ensuring that they get done.
• Checking the mail at least weekly and paying the bills.
• Main contact for vendors (i.e., PG&E, Golden Gate Disposal, etc.)
• Sniffing through the Accounting Inbox weekly and writing any reimbursement checks.
• Fixing and developing systems like special order protocol, earmarked fund management, cash money allocation, etc.
• Migrating incidental tasks to the Weekly, Monthly, and Yearly categories as possible.
• Being responsive on email
• Managing paypal and brown paper tickets money
• Speak up about spending proposals
• Having a solid opinion about the BK financial situation, and promoting that opinion in meetings and on the mailing list.

Daily Duties

These are simple tasks such as using the register and getting petty cash for stuff like TP. The procedures for the daily stuff are pretty much transmitted by folklore, and are handled by anybody who's around. Documentation and training are probably the big improvements to be made here.

Weekly Duties

Every week, somebody Zs out the register, prepares the register report, and deposits the money. That goes in the Accounting Inbox. The Register Report form, which is attached, is the central document that drives the weekly stuff. This is the category of work best done by somebody consistently doing a shift. The big challenge of handling the weekly stuff is solving little mysteries such as "Who didn't pay for their special order?" and "Why is the register $132 light?"

Monthly Duties

The monthly task involves sitting down for a couple of two-or-three hour sessions, going through the Accounting Inbox and updating the ledger with the transactions. There are generally only about 10-20 transactions, but some of them, such as the register deposits and vendor orders are pretty complex. And of course there's always some little mysteries to solve. After working out all of the mysteries, and reconciling with the bank statement, the final step is to prepare the monthly report and email the mailing list. For more information, see the Monthly Accounting Duties wiki page. We keep the ledger in gnucash. See google and ask Brian or Steven about that.

Yearly Duties

The big ones here are reporting and paying sales tax, reporting to the IRS, and (if necessary) reporting to the FTB. These tasks are the usual bureaucratic game of filling out forms, keeping records, etc. The sales tax return has to be completed by January 31 of each year. The IRS and FTB stuff is due 4.5 months after the end of our fiscal year, which lands on March 15 of each year. Another task is to prepare the fiscal year end report. There is no document on how we do this stuff, but we're constantly massaging the weekly and monthly tasks in an effort to make the yearly tasks as painless as possible.