Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Question about expensing purchases for building maintenance

[Kelly Bachman (happyvalleykelly]

Ruby, I would push back on the recommendation to avoid checks to
individuals. In a Cohousing environment, all of the adults are doing the
work and most of them need to purchase supplies at times. It would be
better to focus on robust internal controls such as a detailed budget and
approved signors to address the auditors concerns.

On the debit cards, we have them attached to their own bank account where
we keep a small cash balance so that if a card got away from us, it
couldn’t  drain our main checking account.

Kelly

On Sun, Sep 12, 2021 at 3:36 PM Ruby Reay <rurubux [at] hotmail.com> wrote:

> Kelly,
>
> Thank you. We're getting some advice that auditors don't like to see
> payments to individuals in the form of expenses. I simply can't imagine how
> that is practical, to disallow expensing things. Interesting to hear you
> have a few debit cards. We have one that is not shared.
>
> Thanks again,
>
> Ruby
>
> ________________________________
> From: Cohousing-L <cohousing-l-bounces+rurubux=hotmail.com [at] cohousing.org>
> on behalf of Kelly Bachman <happyvalleykelly [at] gmail.com>
> Sent: Sunday, September 12, 2021 10:07 AM
> To: cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org <cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org>
> Subject: Re: [C-L]_ Question about expensing purchases for building
> maintenance
>
> We ask members to fill out a reimbursement form that requires approval from
> whoever is authorized to approve expenses for that committee.   Most
> community expenses including reimbursements are paid by a twice-a-month
> check run.  The Maintenance Committee has open accounts at the local
> hardware and lumber stores.  The Meals Committee has 2 debit cards that
> they share.  Another debit card can be checked out. We keep the dues
> billing totally separate from reimbursements for community expenses partly
> because it's easier and partly because we have different people performing
> those functions for better internal controls.
>
> Kelly
> Bellingham Cohousing
>
> On Sun, Sep 12, 2021 at 9:31 AM Ruby Reay <rurubux [at] hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Hello all!
> >
> > Question for the community. For teams in your communities that need to
> > expense things to say, manage the building or take care of other
> business,
> > do you allow residents to expense purchases? Do you share an HOA credit
> > card? Do you request checks where it's reasonable and practical to do so?
> >
> > Curious how other communities do this.
> >
> > Thanks,
> >
> > Ruby
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