Cohousing-L Mailing List: Accounting?

[John Major (jmajor]

I searched the Cohousing-L archives, and surprisingly found few references to
this essential topic. So now I appeal to the wisdom of our ephemeral
council-on-the-wire - what have folks done about accounting issues during the
design/development/construction phase? I found a small thread about how to
keep track of meal $$, but I'm thinking about messier things like:
- member investment and ROI
- cash flow projections ("we're going to need $2K from you all next month, to
pay our civil engineer...)
- payments to professionals
- property issues (tax payments, etc.)
and so forth. 

It's clear that big $$ are involved. Here are some questions:
- Did you do your accounting yourself? What software did you use? (any paper
and pencil left out there?)
- Did you hire an accountant at any point? Why? If so, how did they help you?
When should we get ours on board? Were they worth the money?
- Were your books ever gone over carefully by some agency? Why? Were there
problems?

So, as always thanks in advance for the help -

John Major
Wasatch CoHousing
Salt Lake City, UT
jmajor [at] dayna.com 

Profile? Former classic guitarist and composer, now software developer (a
common progression...), grew up in Davis, CA (wife Marti founded the "Blue
Mango" - now there's history!), and finding in CoHousing  the promise of
small-town life and culture that I've been looking for for a long time.

Wasatch CoHousing?  (AKA "WaCoHo", founded and run by the "WaCoHopies".) We
have a great site, and just finished the CoHousing Company's "Getting It
Built" workshop, so now we're out looking for a cadre of willing and
enlightened professionals to help us, well, get it built! It'll be a wild
summer...