[OSGeo Finance] Quarterly Financial Statements

[Dave McIlhagga]

Frank,

One thing we didn't really come up with last year was a budget  
breakdown by quarter. This can really help because you can then assess  
actuals vs. planned. This is particularly important when you have  
things such as:

1. Huge conference rev/exp or other one-time events that show up at  
predictable points and strongly impact budget.
2. ups and downs of sponsorships. Sometimes you can have a wave of  
renewals that give you a false sense of security .. .or vise versa,  
nothing for a period that shouldn't necessarily be alarming if you  
already have a quarter by quarter plan of when money will come in / out.
3. Really helps with Cash flow planning. Even if your income statement  
is great -- if it happens at the wrong time, you can run out of cash  
-- and that's a much bigger problem.


Dave



On 29-Sep-08, at 5:09 AM, Frank Warmerdam wrote:

> Folks,
>
> I'm interested in what we should expect to be producing for
> the board in terms of a quarterly financial statement.
>
> To my untrained mind we should offer two items as part of
> the quarterly statements:
>
> 1) a moderately detailed listing of incoming and expenses
> somewhat similar to the "Profit and Loss - Detailed" that was
> distributed to the board-priv list by Tyler.
>
> 2) An end-of-quarter balance sheet showing a snapshot
> of our status (including accounts receivable and payable).
>
> It might also be nice to have "year to date" income and
> expenses document at the same level as the "Profit and
> Loss - Summary" recently distributed by Tyler, so folks
> have something they can compare to the budget to see
> how we are doing.
>
> Does (1) and (2) seem sufficient?  Should we also aim
> for the year to date document?  Tyler - do you anticipate
> problems preparing such reports in a timely fashion?
> Actually, when I get near windows I would be willing to
> try and generate these reports.
>
> The end of September is an "end of quarter", and I'd
> like to aim to have the finance committee forward
> statements to the board by the next board meeting,
> presumably the start of November.
>
> Best regards,
> -- 
> --------------------------------------- 
> +--------------------------------------
> I set the clouds in motion - turn up   | Frank Warmerdam, warmerdam at pobox.com
> light and sound - activate the windows | http://pobox.com/~warmerdam
> and watch the world go round - Rush    | Geospatial Programmer for  
> Rent
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