2008 - Board Elected - Treasurer

[MichaelEvans]

the TREASURER
is responsible for the following:

The duties of the Treasurer shall be to:

• 1. Collect dues of all members;
• 2. Maintain organization financial records and deliver financial reports to the organization quarterly or when requested by the board;
• 3. Maintain organization banking and bank account.

The Treasurer will work with the Publicity Every department to ensure that all expenditures are accounted for in the department budget by the date specified by the treasurer and agreed upon by the Director of Publicity.

Failure to actively persue the above responsibilities is legitimate cause for a motion to dismiss by any member of the board.

Please post your comments and questions for the nominees who have accepted the nomination for  below.

Nominees are listed here: http://www.kumoricon.org/forums/index.php?topic=5593.0

Corrections to this list may be made by nominating a person...

... Follow This Link and reply.

To Treasurer
   1) What experince do you have in dealing with financial statements and large sum deposits/withdrawls/records?
   2) What means do you expect to use to ensure that all members have paid their dues?
   3) Do you have any plans for facilitating money withdrawls for expenses, both preplanned and immediate?

Treasurers:
When would you like the first draft of the department budgets?
How many stages (drafts and revision periods) do you think you'll schedule before the convention? As in, "first second, final, and post-con".
Will you make any designations/requests for expenditures made quarterly? Such as parts of the budget that should be spent 6 months before the con, amounts to be spent 3 months before the con, at the con, after the con, etc.

[RemSaverem]

personally i would find this job overwhelming and daunting, so i truly do admire anyone who can keep up with it.

however, that is not the same as saying that no mistakes have been made in that process. there have been glitches of various sorts, lackings in preparedness or organization, on at least a few rare occasions, that have definitely caused inconvenience. i have personally experienced and/or personally witnessed each of the following, and i want to know how tara and any other nominee are going to prevent these from happening again:

(a) there was a time i was told i would get a check at a gm for expenses for my programming area (so that i wouldn't have to front the money), but then at that gm, all the checks were used up and there weren't any to give me, so i had to improvise at the last second.

(b) there was a time that months passed after i turned in receipts. i went to tara directly at a gm and asked about them. tara and ryan told me that i must never have turned them in because otherwise they would have reimbursed me by now. i was very certain i had turned them in and repeated precisely when i turned them in, and again was told that i must not have turned them in. then fortuitously i looked down and lo and behold there were the disputed receipts, sticking out from tara's notebook, stapled to a page. i pointed them out and was told by way of apology that they must've assumed that those had already been paid out, mistaking my signature thereupon as tara's indictaing that it had been paid out.

(c) my dolly-making panelist never got the second round of supplies promised for his second workshop. he had turned in his materials list before con and been promised it would be taken care of. brenda said she had a debit card from the treasurer and so all the purchases had to go through her. if i or my panelist had been allowed to make the purchases we would not have had this problem. why can't panelists or at least the managers of their subunits of programming be granted prepaid debit cards of their specific approved budgets to go get our own items? or at least be given checks ahead of time (to us or to craft stores etc) or even front the money (my least favorite option) and then be reimbursed BEFORE CON?
i want  to see this problem fixed.....it's way harder to recruit and retain panelists when managers lack the confidence to promise them they will be reimbursed in a timely manner, or to promise them that they won't have to front the money or do the shopping if they can't, or to promise them that the supplies will be delivered on time if someone else is doing the shopping....

(d) kumoricash didn't happen this year. ed's designs were lovely and were passed around at the online programming meeting. i assumed it was happening. it was a sizeable chunk of my subunit of programming's budget to give away kumoricash as prizes for our fanfic improv theatre games. why didn't kumoricash happen this year? what can the treasurer do to facilitate that it does happen this year? is that within the treasurer's purview? if not, whose? meantime, why didn't it happen? i heard it had to do with not having the printstock ahead of time that couldn't be counterfeited? how did that fail to occur? can we get some way ahead of time (maybe through mike's connection to xerox?) to make sure that we have kumoricash this year? (btw i wasn't informed until i happened to run into ed monday morning, and i wasn't cordially received when i tried to get replacement prizes for our events, nor was there a lot of variety......) what do treasurer candidates feel regarding schwag vs. kumoricash vs. personally purchased prizes (reimbursed by con) for at- con contests?

[TomtheFanboy]

This isn't really a candidate question, but does Kumorikash fall under the responsibilities of the Treasurer?
Has it ever been assigned to a position, or has it always been based on who was up to the challenge?
(That is, the person who "said they would take care of it")

It's too late to start pointing finger and it wouldn't accomplish anything. I'm just looking towards the next convention.

[MichaelEvans]

The way this has worked for every place I've ever been reimbursed through, is that you put together an expense report (which is simply a summary that categorises the expenses, and totals them), include the original receipts (sp?), and before turning it in, Photo Copy everything. (I did mine in triplicate.)

Then, the proof you were paid is when the check is cashed.

[staze]

Yeah, not really candidate issues Ellen. The running out of checks happens. The receipts were never found. The panel stuff was not the treasurers responsibility... it was progamming's.

Kumoricash was fumbled on many many levels last year. The paper was never found (to my knowledge), a person to do it was never found, and there never was a decision on how much to print (had we found the paper).

In 06, Kumoricash was signed by the treasurer, programming, and chair. This was a bit absurd, and required far too much work. Ultimately, the treasurer would be the one to sign it. But, this responsibility should not fall on the treasurer to make the kumoricash as he/she is generally quite busy during the con with cash drops, reimbursements, purchasing, etc.

The process of how things are going to work is going to evolve quite a bit this year... reimbursements, account access, budgeting, etc. Last year, monetarily, was horrible. A lot of money was wasted on a lot of things, because budgeting was extremely lacking (Tara tried, very hard, to get things under control... but met with obstinate directors).

But, again, this discussion is for the board election area, that the candidates and the board have access to.

[RemSaverem]

Ok, makes sense to me.

Perhaps the appropriate question for candidates would be something such as:
What suggestions do you have for streamlining such processes as acquisition of materials needed by panelists, reimbursements, and other paperwork processes?

[staze]

Ok, makes sense to me.

Perhaps the appropriate question for candidates would be something such as:
What suggestions do you have for streamlining such processes as acquisition of materials needed by panelists, reimbursements, and other paperwork processes?

I still don't think that's valid. It's not the treasurers responsibility to get supplies for a panel. Or ask for paperwork for a panel. All of that should be done by the department, and given to the treasurer. Reimbursements, yes, that's valid. And we're working on that. The treasurer can't be asked to be doing all that legwork... just like you can't expect the chair to be deciding on viewing room schedules, or the con schedule and tshirts... oh wait. ****.

Ultimately, because of abuse of the system, and lack of understanding on most parts, I am going to push really hard for a policy that says "unless you have authorization from your director, or the treasurer, and a valid receipt, you will NOT be reimbursed for anything. Don't spend your own money expecting reimbursement". That's basically what Sak does because of previous offenses, and lack of understanding.

This last year, several key people were given pre-paid visa cards for at con expenses: that seemed to work really well. The goal would be to expand that, and institute a system where directors should have access to bank accounts that the treasurer would be able to transfer money into quickly when needed. That was the idea this year, but we met several snags along the way (usually not being able to get ahold of people to get them on the account, or having meetings on Sundays, etc).

[JeffT]

The Treasurer will work with the Publicity department to ensure that all expenditures are accounted for in the department budget by the date specified by the treasurer and agreed upon by the Director of Publicity.

Huh?

[staze]

yeah, I'm not sure this is the way it's going to work... but fairly close. Well, that is, assuming what Tara and Meg were talking about a while back carries through to this year in some semblance.

[JeffT]

Well, I was not referring to the process...just why only Publicity was listed there.

[MichaelEvans]

Well, I was not referring to the process...just why only Publicity was listed there.

I used the publicity election thread as my template, and reversed the statement that was in there.  I figured since it was explicitly listed and didn't include other departments in the statement, that it was some special concern that should be carried in to this thread as well.

[JeffT]

I used the publicity election thread as my template, and reversed the statement that was in there.  I figured since it was explicitly listed and didn't include other departments in the statement, that it was some special concern that should be carried in to this thread as well.

Other departments weren't listed...because it was the Publicity thread. Each department thread had that item with the Treasurer listed.

[MichaelEvans]

Edited, thank you for catching that.