Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Hiring a bookkeeper

[Sharon Villines (sharon]

On 10/07/2003 12:41 PM, "Rob Sandelin" <floriferous [at] msn.com> wrote:

> 
> We may be hiring out the bookkeeping job at Sharingwood. From Communities
> that hire out bookkeeping I'd like to know:
> 1. Do you hire a member
> 2. What do you pay

At one point we had a management company doing our financial management and
they charged $300 a month. This was bill paying, condo fee collection, etc.
for 43 units in a urban area.

We now have a management company doing many more things -- still including
financial management. The problems are the lack of flexibility of their
system. We have continual confusions about where bills should be accounted
for. We want more specificity so we know what is left in team budgets, etc.
Our Internet service is a "DSL subscription" so it goes under a memberships
and publications instead of under the facilities budget. I think we finally
got that one straightened out but there are lots of others.

They, of course, have a large standardized system that they have no idea how
to customize for us. Also we have not been successful in getting our
accounts sent to us in digital files so we can manipulate the data. We
essentially end up reentering what we want to track which is basically
expenditures.

With QuickBooksPro, it should be easy to have a member do this but it is
time consuming so paying them is reasonable. It is a definable task (well
structured) so there shouldn't be conflicts about whether the job was done
or not. And, of course, you should have an annual audit.

Sharon
-- 
Sharon Villines
Takoma Village Cohousing, Washington DC
http://www.takomavillage.org

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