Finance & Legal minutes: 2011-08-22

Minutes:

Minutes of F&L meeting

8-22-11



Present: Mary, Aaron, Amy



Note -- the previous F&L meeting on August 8 was cancelled because of
vacations and an unanticipated conflict. No minutes will be distributed.





1. Discuss community feedback on first draft of Reserve Spending Policy
proposal - work on revisions



Tabled as Becky could not be with us. If time permits, Amy may try to meet
with Becky to work on this before the next meeting.



2. New bank for GOCA and Meals - status?



Finops is looking for a new bank because our credit union was purchased by
another, and it has become both inconvenient and expensive. We hear that
the Meals bank account is also experiencing the same issues.



Elph sent a helpful e-mail message suggesting criteria to consider and
wondering if any other features are needed:



- business friendly (so we don't have to jump through hoops as a special
case and have options that are appropriate for us.)

- free or low fee checking

- decent online banking system

- great customer support for when we have questions or issues

- easy to deposit checks (some local business banks pick up deposits for
you)

- a debit card



bonus round criteria (not necessary)

- a credit union, not a profit mongering bank

- different checking and savings accounts under the same login account



Adi followed up by recommending that we have several separate on-line
savings accounts so we can keep track of our several different funds.



Carl’s sent a message in a different context explaining that he found an
easy way to create sub-accounts in Quickbooks. We think that this may
address Adi’s recommendation that we track accounts separately. Some of our
members have had struggles with managing on-line transfers between accounts
and we would like to keep things as simple as possible for Finops workers.



MONKEY: Amy will informally check in with Kathy, Patti, and Gail to see
where there are in their thinking about new banks. If it seems like it will
be helpful, we will invite them to the next F&L meeting on Sept. 12. We’d
like to get a decision made so we can move on. Gail has mentioned TCF Bank
as an option.



Aaron will talk to Carl about training Kathy on how to set up separate
sub-accounts within Quickbooks – and maybe set them up for her.



3. Follow up on Work Survey results



Comments from Work Com surveys pertaining to F&L:



a) Look into hiring out the Bookkeeper job.

b) Convener should be 6 hours, scale back after Reserve study is done.

c) Community document organizer should be combined with Archivist.



Responses:

a) As a first step, Amy talked with Scott Bogard, a former cohouser who
has been Sunward’s bookkeeper for many years. He explained the system at
Sunward, which is very similar to ours. There is a job similar to our Check
Depositer and another job similar to our Check Writer. They have a system
of checks and balances in which Scott and the people in those jobs check
each other’s work. Scott handles all the association fee billing,
reconciles the bank statements, enters information into Quickbooks,
generates 6 different monthly statements, provides info to their tax
accountant, provides info to the same firm for their annual reviews/audits,
and handles the paperwork/info flow to title companies any time there is a
unit sale. He does this in about 4/5 hours per month and his rate is
extremely reasonable (Amy is not sure if she can share the rate widely
without asking Scott). He would consider working for GO but this would need
to be verified. Amy did not think to ask if he has formal accounting
training.



MONKEY: Aaron will talk to the accountant who works for his church for
$40/hour.



b) Amy will be the F&L convener in the next work season. She is going to
focus on the committee mandate, while Aaron will focus on the Master Deed. We
also have to do a financial review. After these major tasks are done, we
will look at cutting back on work hours. We currently meet for four hours
per month on average and do work outside of the meetings, so in that sense 6
hours is not unreasonable for the convener.

c) MONKEY: Amy will ask Gail what she thinks about combining the Archivist
and Document Organizer jobs.





4. Master Deed



Aaron is busy for the next two weeks, but after that will be able to focus
on this. Aaron hopes that this will be relatively quick. We want to get
this done this calendar year so as not to have to ask the community to roll
over the funds again.



5. Follow-up on e-mail traffic



Adi and Carl have been e-mailing extensively about bookkeeping for the CH
Solar Hot Water heater and this seems to be near resolution.



6. Next steps with Budget Process



MONKEY: Mary will invite Rod to come to the next F&L meeting on Sept. 12 to
check in about the budget process.



7. Where are we with Carl’s cleaning up the books and transitioning to a
new bookkeeper?



Carl is going to meet with Kathy around the end of the month to explain
where things are and to hand over the reins – Kathy will be the new
bookkeeper. Carl seems to be doing a lot to clean things up before then.



MONKEY: Aaron will e-mail Carl to ask for an update and status report.



8. Rebates



If Carl finishes his review of the GO books this month, we will find out if
there are funds leftover for any of the recent years for which no rebate was
issued. After considerable discussion, we decided that it is F&L’s role to
take a very conservative position on whether to rebate funds when there is
substantial debt to the community in unpaid association fees. If there are
leftover funds, we will recommend that the community should only rebate
funds in excess of that debt. However, F&L is not empowered to make this
decision. The community will need to make the final decision about this.



It’s our understanding that GO uses a cash accounting basis rather than an
accrual accounting basis but we aren’t sure if this is an formal, written
agreement. We’re also not sure if there is an agreement around rebates –
both are things to research and Amy is making a note of this.
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