Re: Treasurer's report (or lack thereof)

On Tue, Dec 07, 2004 at 01:47:50PM +0000, Ian Jackson wrote:
> David Graham writes ("Meeting reminder!"):
> > Agenda, as always, is at http://www.spi-inc.org/secretary/agenda/
>
> I have some comments on the minutes, item 4 `Treasurer's report'.
>
> I too agree that what was delivered was not a real Treasurer's
> report, and others (IIRC) said so in the meeting. No-one seemed to
> contend that a proper treasurer's report had been delivered.
>
> I therefore think this item in the minutes should be amended to read
> something like:
>
> No treasurer's report was available. However:

That much sounds fine. I completely agree that our treasurer's reports
are really lacking, and ought to be fixed ASAP, and we ought to be
forthright about the problem in our minutes.

At the same time, I'm concerned that what you're asking for may not be
really doable. A real treasurer's report would include information such
as the balances of monies we're holding for various projects.

I tried to find out this information when I prepared our annual report
earlier this year. The information has either never been kept formally,
or hasn't been kept for many years. To get accurate balances for today
will require a thorough audit of several years' history. From what I
could tell, Brainfood didn't do that kind of audit. That's a lot to do,
and I'm not happy with a resolution that implies our current staff have
failed on this, and pins this sort of thing on a volunteer. The problem
predates both Branden and Jimmy's tenure, from what I can tell.

I think that a proper solution *must* provide proper resources to get it
fixed. We can't just give them an unsupported mandate.

To start this off, what do you, Branden and Jimmy, think you would need
to be able to produce complete monthly reports?

-- John