Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: A letter to share

[Kelly Bachman (happyvalleykelly]

We have used HOACPA.com for our tax return for the last 2years. They cost
less than half of what we had been paying before. We have been happy with
their work.
Kelly
Bellingham Cohousing

On Mon, Apr 8, 2024 at 2:10 AM roger cunningham <nengaku1 [at] gmail.com> wrote:

> I have been volunteer bookkeeper for our Cohousing community for about six
> months. It took some time to learn the system but the decision to pay for
> Quickbooks Online was the best thing we ever did for our financial
> management here. We separated the treasurer and bookkeeping jobs so two
> sets of eyes are on every transaction and the person handling the money is
> not the person recording the transactions thus eliminating any possibility
> of malfeasance. Now if we could just find a better tax preparer who doesn’t
> overcharge and underperform….
> Roger
>
> On Sun, Apr 7, 2024 at 11:14 PM Fiona Frank <fionafrank [at] gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > we've been unbelievably lucky to have first one and now two qualified
> > accountants as members of our community.  And we have another accountant
> > who works on a contractual basis for us.  We operate as a company, and
> our
> > record keeping and accounting and annual reporting has always been
> > excellent.  Thanks for the reminder that it's not always like that!   So
> > suggestion: recruit an accountant to come and live with you (also a
> plumber
> > and an electrician have been very useful, sadly the electrician has moved
> > out, but only to a house more or less next door to our site).
> >
> > On Mon, 8 Apr 2024 at 02:29, Shari Hirst <sharihirst13 [at] gmail.com> 
> > wrote:
> >
> > > I am writing to the co-housing community to express my personal
> > > experience.  This letter is not coming from the Sand River Board.
> > >
> > > We were talked into trying a professional financial management company
> > > because it was explained to our community that they were less expensive
> > and
> > > much more efficient and knowledgeable than we were.  That the most
> > > important responsibility of the Financial Committee’s was to keep
> > accurate
> > > records and a new member was convinced that we weren’t.  She researched
> > and
> > > recommended that we hire a particular business.  We were told that they
> > had
> > > many services that we should use, but never did.
> > >
> > > It turned out that they were more expensive because they nickel and
> dimed
> > > us for everything.  A charge for putting a stamp on an envelope, the
> > > envelope, and such.  When we had questions about work they did, as we
> saw
> > > it, postings to wrong accounts, we never got a response.  In fact, once
> > the
> > > resident who had recommended this business left Sand River, we couldn’t
> > get
> > > a telephone number to contact them.  We would send emails, that were
> sent
> > > on and maybe months later we would get some kind of a response.  We had
> > > been assured that our price would only increase a certain percentage
> > > annually but that didn’t happen.
> > >
> > > It took two years to separate Sand River from this business because of
> > > their criteria that they had to be notified of severance before the
> > > contract renewed.  It took a year working with a bookkeeper to have our
> > > books back to the way they should be.  We are now a little over one
> year
> > > past our severance from the business we hired.
> > >
> > > I am writing to try to save other communities from the troubles we had.
> > A
> > > simple bookkeeper is proving to be the best for us, and less expensive.
> > > Feel free to contact me for further information
> > >
> > > Shari Hirst
> > > Sand River Co-housing
> > > Santa Fe, NM
> > > _________________________________________________________________
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> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
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> >
> >
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