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Financial Reporting Info From BRIAN
The Treasurer has to submit a tax form that totals up your
various sources of income, each into one of these categories:
- Gifts, grants, and contributions received.
- Gross receipts from admissions, merchandise sold or services
performed, or furnishing of facilities in any activity that is related
to the organization's charitable, etc., purpose
- unrelated business activities
- other
Additionally, on a separate part of the form, the treasurer has to fit it all into
THESE categories, which don't always match the above categories:
- Contributions, gifts, grants, and similar amounts received
- Program service revenue
- Special events and activities (includes "gaming")
- Other
Here, program revenue and special events do not always match gross receipts and unrelated business income above. So your financial report should be pretty detailed, not categorized (unless you use Quickbooks or Money, because their categories are pretty good).
How to write reports
The easiest way to do the financial summary is to have a breakdown generated from a good accounting program, similar to the example here: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/paganpride-coords/files/ and click "ppla_2004_financial_report.xls"
Small events might just be able to send a list of each individual donation or other type of income and where it came from, and each expense, where it went, and for what. This is like the example from New Hampshire in 2005, which is here: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/paganpride-coords/message/14249
For your income from the day of the event, many of you lump everything (everything being raffle sales, silent auctions, t-shirt sales, soda sales, or other sales of a product, straight gifts or donations, etc.) in one cash box. But the treasurer needs to know the details of where the money came from, not just that it came from "the event". To keep track of what you sell, consider keeping an inventory of how many items you have before and after the event, and then figuring out how much was sold. Multiply that by the asking price, and that's what you took in for that item. The rest of what was in your case box was probably pure donations or raffle money or whatever you were collecting
The breakdown should include categories of income from your fundraisers. It doesn't help the treasurer to just list "Spring Faire fundraiser: $XXX.XX" coz the treasurer has to categorize the income into contributions, program income, or special events. A fundraiser could be any of the three, or a combination of all three.
This message has been about income, but the treasurer needs the same type of detailed explanation of expenses too, or line items of expenses so top determine which category they fall under: fundraising expenses, contributions paid out, professional fees, independent contractors, other (includes program services expenses, i.e. event expenses).