Club Financial Statements for 2012

[mfine]

All,

This will be a happy day for our board members and hopefully for many of us club members as well. One of the missions of the new board going back about a year and a half ago was to have the club run more openly and be accountable to the members. A critical piece of that was the idea that club financial information would be open to the members. I am attaching our 2012 balance sheet and profit and loss statement in PDF form. These reports were pulled from our quickbooks accounting system that is maintained by an independent accountant and that was used to file our 2012 tax return with the IRS.

There are a few things I would like to point out to anyone who is looking at these numbers in order to get a better understanding of our operations.

Profit & Loss: The books and these reports are maintained on a cash basis. Revenue is recorded when we receive the money, and expenses when we write the checks. This is important because the membership dues and much of the advertising revenue you see is for four full issues of the Brass Bell, however, the expenses for the year only cover the development, printing and mailing of three issues. There were also some additional expenses from 2012 that did not get paid until 2013 that do not show up in these reports. As a result, the club looks like it was much more profitable than it really was last year, and if you saw the first half of this year, it would look like we are losing a lot of money, which we are not. I expect that this will be less of a problem going forward as we are doing a much better job of mailing the Brass Bells on time and I am hopeful that we will see four issues produced and mailed every year going forward. It should also be noted that for the first few months of 2012, the accounts were still under control of the prior leadership and we do not have a perfect picture of all the transactions that occurred prior to April.

Balance Sheet: As I mentioned these books were used to prepare our 2012 tax return and as such they are a carryover from the financials that were filed for 2011 and prior years. The bank and Paypal balances are true, accurate representations of our assets on hand as of the end of December. The other assets including the large sum for the archive represent historical numbers from the past plus any changes that occurred during 2012. In other words these are not clean slate numbers and neither I nor the board have much insight into how they were developed other than that they are based on the amounts the club reported spending in past tax returns. Also, as I mentioned for the P&L, the cash balance was at a high point in December because we had revenue for four BB's and only had paid for three. As of today the cash balance is much lower as we have had higher expenses for the first half of the year, yet the vast majority of our member renewals occur between September and December.

Going Forward: Now that we have 2012 completed, the tax returns filed, and systems in place, we should be able to maintain our books much quicker and report to you in a more timely fashion. The accountant is well on her way to catching up with the 2013 entries and I will work with her to get the first two quarters completed soon. Ideally, I would like to get to the point where we can consistently post quarterly status updates for you within 4-6 weeks of the end of each quarter. While the 2012 reports give a rough snapshot of the state of the club, the ongoing information will be more helpful for the club members who wish to have a deeper understanding of what is going on and where the relative health of the club is at.

If you have any questions, comments, or requests, please let me know and I will do my best to address them.

Sincerely,
Matt "m-fine" Fine
CCABC Treasurer

Profit and Loss 2012.pdf

(11.78 KiB) Downloaded 142 times

Balance Sheet 2012.pdf

(9.57 KiB) Downloaded 125 times

[mfine]

Here are some jpeg versions of the reports for those who are PDF challenged. They are larger files and fuzzier to read so I prefer the PDF format, so please let me know if you think including the jpeg's in further updates is valuable to you.

Matt F.

[Don Vogt]

Great job, Matt. Members may remember that when we took over the club, the till was practically empty, the Brass Bell was almost a year behind in publication, and membership and financial records were in disarray. We have come a long way since then and the support and patience of the membership has paid off. Accountability systems have been put in place, club assets secured, and most importantly our financial systems have become transparent, with a checks and balances system that precludes any one person from having control over club funds without accountability. There are many who have helped in this effort and deserve a big thank you. This includes acbs, our new vendors, advertisers, corporate sponsors, as well as dedicated member volunteers.

[drrot]

YES,
Congratulations to the board are in order. I have been a member for 20+ years and this is a first! Keep up the great work.

[Rugger8]

As one who was critical of how the change came about. I do think it is important to recognize the hard work and increased transparency from the new board. So Congrats to the board for this major step and moving the Club forward.

Jeff

[RichardSGambino]

I am suitably impressed at the financial turnaround. It is a credit to the hard work of everyone on the BOD. Two thumbs up.

[Don Ayers]

Richard;

Thank you for posting and for taking the time to even look over the documents.

Most will never look but the Club will always be open to scrutiny in the future.

Best and sign up just one additional member in 2014, in addition to renewing yourself

[jfrprops]

Really nice work by all of you. Many thanks,

Just got back from cruising on the Chesapeake!! Going boating!!!
!!!!

John in Va.