Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: DIY Accounting vs Management Company

[Kathryn McCamant (kmccamant]

At Nevada City Cohousing, we have hired management assistance (not full
management services) in recent years but much less than Takoma Village. We
initially hired them to do all the boring requirements that no one ever
gets to (disclosures, legal notices, etc‹thinks that don¹t matter much to
cohousers but that an upset person could use to sue you). This year, we
changed it so that they now do our bookkeeping and we¹ve taken back and
divided up the other boring management stuff. We¹ll see how that goes.  We
pay them $3600/year, we are 34 homes. So I think we really get our money¹s
worth, especially since it also gives us a resource to consult when we
have condo questions (what¹s norm, what¹s the law, what¹s are our
options).   

We have been very lucky with in-house bookkeeping (2 different people took
it on over our last 10 years), but we decided to turn that over to the
professionals because we were concerned that if we hired in house, and
something went wrong or was not done properly, it would be a very
uncomfortable situation. Our next set of volunteers were not professional
bookkeepers. 

I think it is important to remember what we can hired out and what we
can¹t, and to always keep the focus what we can¹t hire out and/or what is
most helpful in building the community feel. Thus, if people are time
limited, I would much rather have them give their limited time to cooking
a common house dinner or joining a landscape workday, than doing the
bookkeeping alone at home.

Katie 
-- 
Kathryn McCamant, President
CoHousing Solutions
241B Commercial Street
Nevada City, CA 95959
T.530.478.1970  C.916.798.4755
www.cohousing-solutions.com