Re: Convention $$ -- or - How I learned to Stop Worrying & Love the Budget

["S. Hieber" <shieber@yahoo.com>]

All right on the money, Erik.  The thing about including
counts in the notices is a great idea.  MY guess is a graph
of such things over time ought to show something useful --
we'll see.

In addition to what you mentioned, I am now sending my list
of all paid registrations to Cheryl (membership Czarina),
Barbara B. (Empress of AGA2K3 Registrations), and Tarah
(Duchess of Field Trips) each time I send out a budget
performance and Expense/Revenue update.  This just started
last weekend and the sole purpose to make sure we all have
the same lists.

Also, any paper registrations (are suposed to) come to me,
and I advise Cheryl, Barb, and Tarah accordingly within a
day -- so far none of those have shown up (hooray).

Any checks, for example from vendors/sponsors should come
my way also.

Not all the regs are convention regs (we actually have only
24 if one goes back and counts by hand).  I put an auto
counter in the revenue list which had counted 2 regs too
many -- don't ask why -- but after Larry pointed it out, I
debugged the bugger ;-)

One, uh, thing that has happened that affects David was
that Cheryl had sent some AGA2K3 receipts (I think together
with some AGA receipts) to David that should have gone to
me, and there was a mix up on the receipts I ended up with.
 (We've since promised to keep Cheryl and others better
informed of how we're trying to do things.) So for that
original reimbursement to Cheryl, AGA paid and AGA2K3 did
not :-0  .  I accrued $42, which I believe is the
approximate amount for the goods in question.  When, or
just before, AGA2K3 and AGA settles up, that $42 amount
goes to AGA from AGA2K3. I expect that settlement to occur
sometime after we clsoe out with the hotel, which Larry and
I have scheduled for the Sunday or Monday, convention
weekend.

The budget is, as it should be, somewhat obsolete -- it was
a *plan* and now we're underway.  It's locked, whether all
the amounts are right or wrong.  From here on out we're
using Budget Performance: results to-date and estimated
final results compared to the original budget (as of
lock-down date).  Budget Performance won't get interesting
until we've had about twice the activity we've had so far.

It hasn't been a perfect budget process, but it's working
pretty well so far.  In fact the trickiest thing is the
peculiar way PayPal does rounding when it computes
transaction charges.  It's something like to the nearest
mil and then to the nearest centum on the sum per customer,
but not quite  -- maybe they're using banker's rounding, I
hadn't considered that.  Anyway, the reconciliation of
predicted verus actual PayPal fees might be off by a
whopping $0.25 before it's all over.  The reconciliation is
included on the exp/rev page but it's probably more
confusing to most than helpful -- it fills my idle time,
tough ;-)

Anyone that needs to see the budget/exp/rev/performance
worksheets is welcome to do so.  Just let me know.  Some of
the budget totals might seem strange because some items are
listed for reference purposes but not counted in the
totals.  For example certain foregone revenues aren't
totalled as if they were cash outlays, but such arithmetic
oddities are usually noted.

sh
--- Erik Olson <erik@thekrib.com> wrote:
> On Sun, 31 Aug 2003, David VillaSunscape wrote:
> 
> > Hi guys -- I've seen some notifications that are for
> the convention come by.
> > How are we handling the fuynds for the convention? Just
> want to know in my
> > capacity as Treasurer.
> 
> Wow, I thought we'd totally explained all that.  Oh well,
> my bad.
> 
> DFWAPC has set up their own bank account.  Scott Heiber
> is the treasurer 
> for the convention.  He and Larry drew up this very
> elaborate and 
> conservative budget which I would be happy to ask them to
> forward if you 
> guys want to see it again. :)
> 
> Scott and a couple of folks who keep the head counts of
> who's registered
> and all that, are now temporarily subscribed to the party
> list
> agafunds@aquatic-gardeners.org.  Much as Diana, Cheryl
> and I do for books,
> memberships and videos (respectively), they are
> scrutinizing every
> agafunds e-mail for registrations and related items. 
> Cheryl, I beleive,
> is also checking to make sure they are members and
> sending them nice
> e-mail reminders when they "forget".
> 
> I am writing each convention-related purchase in a
> logbook (PAPER!) that I
> keep for AGA-related financial stuff (like CDs and videos
> that get
> purchased.  Every "so often" (either when the Texas guys
> actually need to
> spend some of their income, or when I hit the end of a
> page in my
> logbook), I total up the income for the convention
> (taking special pains
> to include the 2.9% + 30 cents PayPal cut!), and transfer
> that sum off to
> the convention bank account (not the AGA bank account).
> Scott, who has
> been keeping even better track of things, corrects the
> mistakes I make.  
> Essentially you (David) should be able to completely
> ignore all the
> convention-related expenses that go through the PayPal
> account. 
> 
> So far, the convention has taken in $2866.56 through
> PayPal, through 26
> paid registrations plus add-ons.  I gather that last year
> there were only
> 35 paid registrations, and most of them came late.  As
> there is still 2.5
> months before the convention, this is going to rock.
> 
> In a related note:
> I don't know when our fiscal year starts and ends, but I
> am planning on 
> writing a little script that goes through all the PayPal
> items and gives 
> us an idea how many of each things were purchased,
> perhaps month-to-month.  
> Maybe Cheryl or you have an idea of how many folks are
> still paying by 
> mail... then we can get an idea of how many memberships
> actually come in 
> per month (something I currently have no idea of!).


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