Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Annual audit ? Bookkeeping? Reserve studies?

[Diana Carroll (dianaecarroll]

I'm the primary bookkeeper for Mosaic Commons.  We looked into having
professional bookkeeping services but it didn't work out for us.  It took
some work for me to get everything set up but at this point I spend,
perhaps, 5 hours a month for regular book keeping, and then a lot more time
than that preparing for our annual budget planning and review.  I don't
dare think about how much time I spend on that, I might get depressed.  :-)

Our association is 34 units.  Much bigger than that and I think it would
probably go beyond what I could do.

We have not yet had an audit.  At some point I will probably propose that,
but no doubt it is pricey and money is always tight.

We are in our third year and have not yet had a reserve study done but are
planning one for next year.  I'm not aware of any state requirement to have
them done at any particular interval.  (We are in MA.)

Being as new as we are, many things are still being worked out, around
finances as well as many other topics.  For instance, we are only now
putting in policies and procedures for spending reserve funds!

-Diana