On Fri, May 6, 2016 at 10:35 AM, Karen Sandler <ka...@sfconservancy.org> wrote:
> On 2016-05-06 12:06, Adam Holt wrote: > > s/he tries to do that, SFConservancy has explained to me that they >> often take a month-or-so to get all receipts entered into their >> system, so the Financial Manager cannot in fact get hard information >> about January. My understanding from SFConservancy is that on >> February 10th, we could only get hard info on December's financials, >> and even then there's no absolute guarantee, as receipts come in very >> late at times. >> > I meant to clarify above that SFConservancy has no possible way provide SL fully complete/accurate financial info when receipts are sometimes submitted ~90 days late? What Karen says below, exactly! In short, the current/proposed Financial Manager job description ( https://docs.google.com/document/d/16jIFuZ9bX-Bv675BpA1KmcEcRcX4PRCOUEX0ICRUkOc) needs more tuning of its operational mechanics month-by-month and quarter-by-quarter, for the reasons Karen laid out. If in the end SL will benefit from 10+ hours-per-month of professional financial consulting/reporting every month, we cannot make an underpaid Financial Manager and others' lives impossible, by imposing more accounting burdens than is in fact possible within 10 hours-per-month-or-whatever-is-recommended, such that nothing happens in the end (back to square one worst case) if we ask for too much. PS on a more positive note (!) can someone help me publish SFConservancy's latest travel/expense/reimbursement guidelines and requirements directly off of https://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Finance#For_funding_travel ? Is there a public link somewhere already, or can we make one now, if someone has this/these document(s) handy? On the one hand it sounds ridiculous, in the age where most of us >> obtain live bank statements online, that we cannot get confirmed >> up-to-date financials until 2 months later! But what other options >> are there? Should we accept known-imprecise financial reporting in >> exchange for recency? >> > > It's great you're contemplating hiring a financial manager - increased > engagement from SL in its finances might solve some of the problems from > third-parties that are the root cause of delays in update to the books (we > cannot help the fact that travelers sometimes take a long time to ask for > reimbursement, for example). As Adam indicates, any faster financial info > would surely be less precise. As we hear in reports from others, we're the > fastest at getting our financial data up to date in the entire industry. We > keep books for almost 40 projects that have many transactions, and we're > doing it with only a staff of 3 who have a lot of other work too. A > financial manager will be able to track the few transactions that haven't > processed in the interim so you have the granularilty when you need it. > > More realistically, it's worth reiterating that building an annual budget > is really what you should focus on. We will track spending against it on an > ongoing basis. You currently have a balance of over $80k that has not > changed in some time - are you contemplating undergoing expenses in a 2 or > 3 month period that would need exact amounts on a daily basis? For example, > our own books (which are much bigger) are updated at the same rate as SL's > and it works great for us as we build our budget and monitor income > throughout the year. A Financial manager could also save us time and > heartache by vetting travel reimbursement requests against the travel > policy. > > Given the holistic discussion, it's also worth saying that while I (along > with everyone else at Conservancy) am a huge supporter of SLs and would be > happy for you to stay with us, we take a loss on our fiscal sponsorship > work for you. On average, you give back to us $36/week for *all* the > services we provide to you. That's less than $2000 per year when we must > pay our auditors $12k alone. > > As always you should definitely feel free to look for another nonprofit > home. We deliberately designed our termination provisions to be very easy > to leave. As I said, we're unaware of anyone doing it faster (and we hear > that most are far slower in updating books) but we'd have no problem > helping you to transition to another org. > > I don't always follow this list closely, but I'm happy to set up a call or > IRC chat any time. > > karen > > > Karen M. Sandler > Executive Director, Software Freedom Conservancy > __________ > Become a Supporter today! http://sfconservancy.org/supporter/ > > -- > <http://sfconservancy.org/supporter/> > <http://sfconservancy.org/supporter/> > Unsung Heroes of OLPC, interviewed live @ > <http://sfconservancy.org/supporter/>http://unleashkids.org ! >
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