Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Do-It-Yourself Bookkeeping?

[R.P. Aditya (aditya]

Our community, 37 households in Great Oak in Ann Arbor, MI, does the
accounting using QB online, and we divide the job between 2 people
(bookkeeper and a check writer/depositer) and give them around 10 hours
a month total.

This does not include accounting for meals (4-5 nights a week, variable
pricing based on menu and number of diners), which is handled by a
program I wrote along with online meal signups and about 3 hours of time
for meals biller(s) to enter checks and write reimbursement checks
(though if more people were willing to pay the 3% Paypal transaction fee
we could have it almost fully automated!).

I doubt we would stop doing it ourselves anytime soon. Few of the
problems we have are related to the tool or doing it ourselves. The main
problems seem to be with maintaining adequate documentation of policies
and their implementation.

Thanks,
Adi
Great Oak Cohousing
Ann Arbor, MI, USA
http://gocoho.org