The purpose of this section is to introduce core concept: "always leave a papertrail", and give easy tips for a person who is immediately assuming financial duties, but hasn't yet read the rest of this document. Mention multi-signature bank accounts and other good habits?
So you've volunteered to be a treasurer for a community organization. Good for you! Now what? It can take time to take over from your predecessor and/or setup accounting practises for a new organization. In the mean time, your organization still needs to move forward. But here are some simple guidelines that will immediately help:
- get for receipts for everything. Write on the receipts memos of what it was for and who paid it (and if they need to be reimbursed)
- avoid cash, prefer cheques.
- if you have to accept cash, have two people count the money and sign a statement to the effect: "On this day, at this event, we counted $money in the cashbox. There was $float at the start of the event, so we collected $net total. (Person) is going to deposit $deposit in our bank account."
When in doubt, ask yourself: "if someone else looked at my records, would they understand how the money was spent?"
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