Greetings, Northshield,
As we slowly, carefully, reopen and groups begin to host events again, I’d like to remind folks about the planning and reporting required.
First, all events require a budget, approved by your group’s Financial Committee. The income portion of that budget is your best guess as to how many people will likely attend and, based on the fees you vote to charge, how much money you hope to take in. The expenses portion of the budget sets the maximum your Exchequer can pay out for site fee, food, materials, and other expenses. If, for example, your budget is $300 for food, and members request reimbursement for $285, your Exchequer can pay that without seeking further approval from the Financial Committee. But if the reimbursement total is $315, your Exchequer can only pay the budgeted amount of $300 without seeking further approval.
During the event, I strongly recommend the use of the Cash Chain of Custody form. It tracks how much money is in the cash box at the start of the event and at the end, identifying how much of the difference is in cash and in checks. It includes an area to quickly summarize how much was received in what categories (how many paid X for gate, how many paid NMR, etc.) to confirm that the difference in funds in the cash box matches with that reported on the gate sheets.
All events that go on the Kingdom calendar must submit an NMR report, even if they charge no gate fee (and thus collect no NMR funds), and even if the event is cancelled. Society uses our calendar to confirm that we have reported and paid in all NMR funds. Even if the event is cancelled, you need to submit an NMR report within 10 days of the posted date of the event.
Your Exchequer needs to submit the Financial Event Report for the event within 30 days of the close of the event. Event income and expenses reported on your group’s quarterly reports need to match with the amount shown on the event report. Hopefully, the deposits made and checks written after the event also match with this report. Categorizing the funds on the Deposit Reporting form to match with the Event Report will make this much easier to track.
Note that the cash withdrawn from the bank for cashbox seed money is not shown as an expense. It is simply an asset moved from the bank to cash held by the Exchequer. If it returns to the bank before the end of a quarterly reporting period, it is not even reported.
For more on event planning and reporting, please see Chapter 7 on the Society Chancellor of the Exchequer Handbook.
Bayard