Greetings, all -
We seem to be having a pretty good year, with five months gone. Our ready cash accounts are up to roughly $37,000 from $9,000 on January 1. That's not quite as positive as it sounds, though, since it reflects an emergency transfer of $10,000 from the Vanguard account, as well as the $10,000 Minstrel Grant. But we're still ahead of where we were, so that's good.
With that in mind, I'm going to start this month with a Balance Sheet. This report tells us where we are:
It starts with Current Assets, showing the bank and cash accounts with a total for each. Then Accounts Receivable, which is money we've earned but haven't yet received. Then you have the Vanguard account, and the Prepaid Expense account. That's where you'd find the deposit for the Fall Festival and the advance paid to Tom Paxton. Up to here, we are accurate to the penny, but the Fixed Assets has always been harder to manage. That's a number I'm taking on faith.
Under liabilities, Accounts Payables shows a tiny little bill from Pat Brangs which I'm holding to combine with her next newsletter expense. And the prepaid admissions is the money we've collected for the Paxton concert, presented as a liability on the assumption we'd have to return it if the concert were cancelled. It's the reverse of Accounts Receivable, since it's money we have but have not yet earned.
At the very bottom, you see the net of the assets and the liabilities. You can think of this is as the organization's liquidation value.
The second report is the usual Departmental P&L. This report tells us how we're doing, and is the one the Directors should review most carefully. The columns represent the departments, and the rows show categories of income and expenses. You'll also notice that this month, we have a new line for Other Income at the bottom, which reflects the increase in the value of the Vanguard account. We usually update that at the end of each quarter, but I didn't have the number when I distributed this report last month.
So in the first five months, we have brought in a little over $4,000 in new money (not counting the Minstrel grant), but almost a quarter of that can be attributed to Vanguard's "Other Income."
Questions or comments are welcome. When I have the first half data, I'm going to add some charts to the mix, to help people visualize how things are going. I won't be able to do that directly from QuickBooks, so I only want to do it at the end of each quarter.
Regards,
Chris
Chris Riemer Treasurer The Folk Project
www.folkproject.org