On 23/08/2019 09:24, Michael Hendry wrote:
First, Adrien makes some very valid points which I think you should
consider.
As previously mentioned on the list, I’ve just become Treasurer of our local
Rotary Club, which has two sets of books, one relating to the business of
running the club (annual subs, insurance, secretarial support, etc) and the
other to the club’s charitable activities.
The club part is straightforward, and has no need for the business features.
The charity accounts are different in that although the bulk of the income
comes from the general public, some of it is extracted from members with
particular charitable destinations in mind.
Charitable organisations have some quite specific accounting
requirements in the UK and most countries. Don't let the other people
fool you about where the money is going to and from.
For example, the price of the meals at meetings is rounded up to the nearest
pound, and the remainder is earmarked for “Charity Choice”. Not all members
attend every meeting, and some members skip the meal and make a token payment
to Charity Choice. There are several such income headings to deal with.
Sounds like crap to me.
Think about this: I went to dinner with my mates, said it cost more than
it did and said the difference was for charity. Would you believe me?
The difficulty is that it must be possible to document each individual member’s
contributions over the year in order to make a Gift Aid claim to Her Majesty’s
Revenue and Customs (HMRC), which tops up the members’ contributions by 25%.
OK, it sounds to me like you're being asked to cheat HMRC. Are you
prepared to do that?
I have set up a series of accounts of the form:
Income:Destination1:member1 … Income:Destination1:memberN
…
Income:DestinationX:member1 … Income:DestinationX:memberN
don't do it like that, think of income as a source not a person, "where
are we getting our income from?", "who are we paying our expenses too?",
"are we washing money?"
which allows me to report on the total income for each destination easily, but
makes it harder to pick out individual members’ contributions.
Changing the hierarchy to Income:memberN:DestinationnX would make it easy to
pick out the Gift Aid detail per member, but harder to report on the total
raised for each destination.
gnc is unusually flexible in that you can change the hierarchy on the
fly and report on that (you should also look at the buglist if you find
altering, editing or creating accounts turns out to be a problem).
It occurs to me that it might be easier to treat members as customers, who
would “purchase” Gift-Aid-Claimable (as well as non-claimable) items. In the
case of “Foundation Dinners”, members commit in advance to pay for a meal at
another member’s home - this commitment would be equivalent to an order payable
on delivery of the goods. I wouldn’t anticipate issuing invoices, but a monthly
list of defaulters would allow me to issue gentle reminders.
This is a classic charitable issue. Our american friends have their
answers but they only work in some states and not others.
I think you'll find your Rotary Club might have been breaking the
charitable reporting rules for a while.
It might well be easier to deal with some of these reporting tasks using
spreadsheets, but I’d much prefer to have a single point of entry for each
transaction.
The problem isn't a gnc one, start here
https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/charity-commission
depending on how much money you are processing you may or may not need
to report some stuff.
It’s been the usual practice for Treasurers to serve for five years, so
slow-but-sure is preferable to fast-and-dirty.
I’d appreciate the advice of the list - especially from anyone with practical
experience of my situation.
This isn't about gnc, this is about understanding the rules about
charities. Having a dinner with friends and declaring it a charitable
contribution is a bit last century.
Hitting a women is also regarded as wrong.
Voting a stupid man president or a buffoon prime minister is, however,
allowed in some countries.
HTH
Wm
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