Re: tlug: Accounting goodwill

[Craig Oda <craig@example.com>]

On Sat, 21 Feb 1998, Kei Furuuchi wrote:

> 1) capital instead of donation.
>    if I assume donation is main part of fund raising,
>    I want to take them as investment rather than
>    donation, so money as asset is accounted for someone
>    who invest them. So there should be book keeping that
>    show them clearly, and Executive branch feel responsibility
>    clear accounting even if the organization is not for profit.

TLUG balance sheets are currently done by a professional
accountant (standard accounting degree and MBA from
accredited educational institutions ) with more than five
years professional accounting
and financial analysis experience in a major U.S. institution.
The current sheet is done using Wingz on Linux and I couldn't
figure out how to convert to HTML.  The screen shots are available
as a matter of public record at:

  http://www.twics.com/~craig/tlug/finance/

I try to bring the receipts and bank book to every meeting for
audit by the membership.  

Every single yen is accounted for with no discrepancies in the books
thus far.  


> 2) goodwill too.
>    some members are actively participating in the particular
>    projects, working hard and contributing their resouces.
>    I think those are also accountted as goodwill in at least
>    unit of time, So this gives budget bases, reports.
>    in case of failure, at least causes of failure will be
>    known and accounted for.

This is kind of an interesting idea.  But it would take 
the cooperation of each person to record the time contibuted
and there would have to be a way to verify the time.  

It might be better to start with a list of what people are
doing and keep it on the web for public record.  This might
be enough for the rest of the group to give those people some
extra weight on a vote. 

>  3) inuvas
>    inuvas may never get dividends or rewards, they could
>    get sense of worth a while, get voting weight as
>    stockholders. could set a goal more difinately.

This was actually recommended by my accountant in a way.  I
am supposed to record the amount each person donated.  I'll
do this at the next meeting/nomikai by writing amounts next to the
names.  Thus, when we record the revenue amounts, we can have
the amounts per meeting generated from the meisai of detailed
ledger of who donated what.  

The voting thing could come later.  I do agree that I should
keep more detailed records on a per person unit.  

> 
>  4) News server instead of maillist.
>    if there are newsgroup for projects, project participants
>    could address their own interests more systematically
>    than maillist.

I have my own opinions about this.  IMHO, the mailing list
is the method that is most effective for the current size
of the participants.  However, it could start to break
down within 6 months if the traffic keeps increasing at the
current rate.  

So in summary, I think that with a minimal of effort, we
keep better records of both time and monetary contributions.
However, I would tend to just list these on the web for
public record.  Complex systems that involve voting weight
based on donation might be too much, too soon.

However, this is just my humble opinion.  

Regards,
Craig


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