Just When I Thought I Was Out

“Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in,” is what Michael said in The Godfather: Part III.  I am not a Mafioso, but I think that I know a little about how he felt.  After four years as CCC President and a smooth transition to a new President, I was looking forward to kicking back, playing on the radio, and generally enjoying myself.  That didn’t work out at the CCC Annual Meeting at Dayton last month, when I was elected CCC Treasurer.  Just when I thought I was out…

First and foremost, we all need to thank David Shipman, VA7AM, for serving as CCC treasurer for many years.  Over the years, David was renowned for his speed of completing transactions for deposits, reimbursements, and other tasks.  No matter where in the world he was traveling, David maintained the same speed and efficiency for which he was famous.  Thank you David.  You have set the bar high. [Thank you sincerely, David – ed]

As many of you recall, I could not give a complete report on the club finances Dayton meeting.  I knew that no funds were missing or unaccounted, but I needed to sort out the split of money between the CCC Treasury (CCCT) and the Europe Tower Replacement Fund (EUTF).  I promised everyone that I would do that as my first project as the new treasurer.  Everyone seemed to have faith in my ability to sort things out, and I appreciate the vote of confidence.

I can now report with complete confidence that all funds have been sorted out, recorded, accounted, and made visible.  I would like to take complete credit for this, but in reality Geoff, W0CG did the majority of the work.  Geoff started from a blank spreadsheet and reconstructed the complete history of all donations made to the EUTF.  He did this based on traces and records that were miraculously kept over the past two years.  On the specified date of Tuesday, 6/12/2018 at 3:00 PM, Geoff reported to me his complete EUTF donation schedule that showed the EUTF to have received $16,139.51 in donations.  Keep that number in mind for the moment.

To get ready for the hand-off, I opened two separate checking accounts with my bank, one for the CCCT and one for the EUTF.  I then created two new email accounts and opened two separate PayPal accounts, one for the CCCT and one for the EUTF.  They are named ccc@pj2t.org and eutower@pj2t.org respectively.  Having two completely separate bank account and PayPal pairs greatly simplifies keeping the two funds accountable and transparent.

I have maintained treasuries for businesses and non-profits before, and prefer to do it with dedicated accounting software tools.  I am familiar with how these tools operate and comfortable that they do not make mistakes.  I looked around for a free, cloud based accounting app and found several that were highly rated.  I tried two of them, Zoho and Wave.  Both free accounting apps did all of the basics that I expected an accounting app to do, but they fell short in some key areas.  The free version of Zoho could only handle five customer/clients per month.  Wave could not integrate smoothly with PayPal.  Both of these deficiencies were show stoppers to me.

I ran out of time and patience, so I bought a subscription to QuickBooks.  I will pay for this subscription myself.  Call it a donation to the club and support for my sanity.  QB is the “Gold Standard” of small enterprise accounting software.  I have used it before and know that has none of the limitations inherent in the free apps.  Like the free apps, it is cloud based, so that I can access it from any internet connected device.  The subscription also comes with unlimited phone and email support in case I cannot figure out how to do some task.

Geoff and I bulk transferred the funds to the new accounts and I went to work building a chart of accounts, connecting the bank accounts, and categorizing the transactions.  I imported the club roster into the list of customers.  I wrote sales receipts and expense memos for all of the donations and reimbursements.  I tested all of the PayPal to Bank to QB to Bank to PayPal connections.  At this point, everything is set up and ready for the first round of incoming funds and outgoing disbursements.

The reports attached give us a very good picture of where we stand.  The Profit and Loss statement is a list of all different kinds of funds that came into the CCC accounting system that I set up.  These include the transfers from Geoff when I started being treasurer.  The sum of all the incomes is the gross profit, or the total money that came in to my CCC accounting system.  It shows the expenses over the same time period.  Some of these are reimbursements sent to the Ownership Entity, a.k.a. Geoff.  Our gross profit minus total expenses over the same period is our net operating income.  Note that the totals include the EUTF, but the EUTF has its own special account in the chart of accounts.  After this initial report, the Profit and Loss statements will cover one month each.

The Balance Sheet does not cover a period of time like the Profit and Loss statement.  The balance sheet is a snapshot of all the club’s assets, liabilities, and equity as of some instant in time.  The Balance Sheet shows how much money is in each of the two bank accounts and the two PayPal accounts.  The club has no liabilities (at the moment), so our members’ equity is the same as the club’s assets.  The reason that the assets on the Balance Sheet are not the same as the net income on the Profit and Loss is that one generous member (Gary, N7IR) was owed $392.22 to be reimbursed to him for his work as Station Equipment Lead, but Gary donated his reimbursement to the EUTF.  The club received a donation, but no cash was deposited.  In general, the operating income seldom equals the assets in a cash based accounting system.

I was determined to tease apart every last donation to the EUTF from the bulk transfers and create accurate sales receipts for every single person who donated anything to the EUTF.  Thanks to the ultra-detailed and precise reconstruction that Geoff completed, I was able to do just that.  The form called EUTF is a complete report of every donation made to the EUTF in the history of the EUTF, by individual donor and donation.  This was not an easy task, but I felt it was necessary to assure every member that I now have good accounting of every dollar in the EUTF.  The dates are not meaningful, but everything else good data.

Recall from earlier that Geoff handed me a grand total of $16,139.51 in donations.  There were exactly four donations that were summed into the EUTF outside of the handoff of 6/12/2018: $300 from Anders Qvist, SM4KYN, $25 from Gene, KB7Q, $100 from me (W8WTS), and $392.22 from Gary, N7IR.

$16,139.51 + $300 + $25 + $100 + $392.22 = $16,956.73.  This is exactly the amount on the bottom of the EUTF donation account report.  To the penny.  I am now confident that I can maintain the CCCT and EUTF with good accuracy.

It took some effort, but I believe that I have a very workable, precise treasury accounting system set up.  It should not require a large investment of my time, which is good because I unfortunately remain employed.  I look forward to helping contribute to the continued success of The Caribbean Contesting Consortium for the next two years.  Thank you for electing me CCC Treasurer.  I will not let you down.

73,

Jim, W8WTS

(Editor’s note – Jim and I have been working on how to use this new platform to make documents available, while at the same time we are participants in a larger discussion about what kinds of club financial operation documents should or should not be available in a public forum.  Though I have not yet sorted yet how to make documents available here on our newsletter platform, Jim has already circulated all the documents to the club’s email list).