Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Operating Expenses, Who Does them and with what Controls?

[Eris Weaver (eris]

>  1) How does your community use credit cards and debit cards to pay for
> community expenses and what controls do you have in place for those
> expenditures?
  
We don't use credit cards.

>  2) What budgeting controls do you have in place for operating
expenditures?

>     2a-  Is every operating expenditure checked to see that it is within
budget? If so, who does that?
>     2b-  If a legitimate expenditure exceeds budget, what override or
exception procedures are used?
>     2c-  If a requested expenditure would exceed budget but is not deemed
essential, what denial or refusal procedure is used? Who issues the refusal?

Our committees have authorization to spend their budgets. They submit
invoices to our treasurer for payment, and invoices must be initialed by the
committee's chairperson, who is theoretically supposed to pay attention to
expenditures over the year. If the invoice isn't initialed or correctly
filled out, the treasurer doesn't pay it until everything gets straightened
out. (He is a detail guy and we love him for it, even when it drives us
crazy!)

If a committee requests something after their budget is completely spent
out, or if someone proposes a project that wasn't included in the original
budget, we have a couple of paths.

Our annual budget includes a line item called "Discretionary" to account for
the fact that sometimes things go over. It's usually a thousand or two or
three.

Our finance committee has the power to authorize committee overages and
discretionary requests up to a certain amount (which I am not remembering at
the moment as I am no longer on that committee, but I think is around $500.)
More than that would have to come to the whole community. There have been
times when the treasurer and/or finance committee have denied a request, but
98% of the time they are approved.  I actually can't think of any instances
where an operating overture had to come to the whole community.

We have had an operating surplus every year since we've moved in (9 years
yesterday!). In the grand scheme of things, we are a well-funded community!

We also have a separate Project  Fund and an Energy Efficiency Fund, so
one-time or major projects have another place from which to draw funds (but
that's getting beyond your original question about operating expenditures).

Eris
Former finance committee member @ FrogSong (Cotati, CA)
------------------------------
Eris Weaver, Facilitator & Group Process Consultant
eris [at] erisweaver.info
707-338-8589
http://www.erisweaver.info

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