Nailing the treasurer's report

Whether you're a veteran or have just recently been appointed treasurer of your not-for-profit organisation, these 10 T's will have you on your way to treasury success.

1. Tight

The ideal treasurer, it goes without saying, produces accurate accounts which show income and expenditure by category and assets and financial situation at the end of the month. This is the minimum requirement - which is some way from the desirable performance.

2. Timely

Not only does the ideal treasurer produce the perfect papers, they do them in sufficient time to allow the secretary to circulate them before the meeting - with notes pointing readers towards the important parts.

3. Trustworthy

Timely or not, the papers don't go out until the ideal treasurer has checked them over to make sure that the figures hang together. Today's spreadsheets do so much for you that it's easy to overlook the place where you've subtracted instead of added. Do a couple of sums on the back of an envelope just to be sure you're in the right ballpark.

4. Transparent

The ideal treasurer will take account of the fact that the average board member's understanding of financial affairs is such that their idea of a good fundraiser is to apply to that nice Mrs Abija from Nigeria who keeps sending them those helpful emails. The ideal treasurer not only breaks these matters down as far as possible into non-technical layperson's language but then checks around the table to bring out any remaining areas of uncertainty.

5. Thorough

The ideal treasurer's report covers not just money changing hands but contract liabilities outstanding. If you get a two-year project grant, for example, you can make your budget look very good in year one, but will then find at the beginning of year two that all the grant money has been spent and half the project expenditure is still to come. Many organisations have skipped along that path happily after getting an acceptable cash flow report from the treasurer, only to run unexpectedly into the wolf around the next corner.

6. Thoughtful

The ideal treasurer knows that their responsibility doesn't stop when the figures have been produced. The treasurer has to put them into context, and to say what they mean. Treasurers' reports should not be the same thing as auditors' reports. The board needs to know the significance of the content from the point of view of management. What are the figures trying to tell us? What pressures are building up? Where are the opportunities? The treasurer is responsible not just for proposing economies but also for floating new budget initiatives.

7. Tested

The ideal treasurer's report uses the immense resources of modern spreadsheet programs to compare the present situation with the draft budget that was approved last April. Is the expenditure under this heading more or less than at the same time last year? Is the income less than predicted? Is the difference large enough to matter? (You don't want to spend half the meeting discussing why cleaning has risen 204% since last year, from $25 to $51). You can program your computer to flag all important discrepancies and print them out in red.

8. Targeted

The ideal treasurer reports with one eye on the action that needs to be taken, moving quickly over areas that haven't changed or are as anticipated and giving most time to the issues that are coming up as items in the agenda. And, of course, the ideal treasurer can tell the difference.

9. Tough

The ideal treasurer doesn't sugarcoat the news. Above almost all else, the board needs to know if there's trouble on the horizon. Almost the only thing that can, in practice, get the individual members of a not-for-profit board in trouble, is trading while insolvent.

10. Timed

As everything the organisation does requires budgeting, anything at all can come up under the heading of the budget, and unless prevented it will. The ideal treasurer has put a suggested time limit next to the report in the agenda, and knows how to signal the chair to move the meeting along to the next agenda item after everything that has to be considered has been considered, and before everything that might conceivably be considered has been raised.

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