[OSGeo Finance] Reviving the Finance Committee

[Tyler Mitchell]

On 2011-09-27, at 5:44 AM, Daniel Morissette wrote:

> On 11-09-26 06:54 PM, Tyler Mitchell wrote:
>> I've just sent an invite request to Daniel, with full access and to the info at osgeo.org
>> account for read access.  Frank, can you pick a password and circulate?  You should
>> see the invite soon.
> 
> Thank you Tyler. I have been able to login with my new account.
> 
> I had a quick look at the accounts, balance sheet, etc, and already have questions on the state of the finances and the way things are handled in QuickBooks.
> 
> First, there seem to be large quickbooks balances for all bank accounts and credit cards. Do they match reality? If not then is there a way we can make them match?

There is a process I'll outline for you later this week, including downloading transactions from the banks, filing them in appropriate categories, etc.  Now I have to go back and reconcile them with our bank statements so the values match.  I'm 90% there on the first two steps and reconciliation and cleanup is next.  That will be one of the big jobs for handing of the finances to you - which I expect to complete over the upcoming couple of weeks.  It will be a major focus for me and will need your patience while doing that.  It's my typical year end cycle basically - so you'll be up and running with fewer questions.

> In the list of donors, some of them have outstanding invoices over a year old... does this really reflect reality? Do we have a history of actions taken / contacts made to get them back on track? I think it would be useful to get that list so that we can assign board members as key contact to each sponsor (my own idea, board members may not agree).

To generate invoice #s I enter them in quickbooks.  Sometimes those invoices don't get paid in time and a new one has been generated for a new year.  Likewise some sponsors wire money but don't tell me, so you can't always know who it's from unless you (manually!) ask TD Bank branch to lookup details.  I have an appointment with them later today and that's one of the items on my list.

So yes, some invoices are not completed yet, but for the most part we'll void out some remaining or old ones after I get more details.  Again, part of my reconciliation cycle.

> At some point in the not too distant future we should setup a conference call with Tyler and the Finance committee to go over the way accounting was done so that we can better understand and continue in the same direction.

I'm going to need a week or two before this will really be useful.  Bear with me :)

Thanks for getting the ball rolling.
Tyler