Support for Treasurers on our website
With the new year it’s a good time to remind our treasurers of the resources available on our website under the finance section that will come in really handy, these include treasurers written guides, webinars designed specifically for us by Xero and other useful documents. We also have a Treasurers Facebook page which is an excellent way to get quick peer to peer support as well a meet a really great bunch of people. Myself and some members of our finance team will even pop in from time to time and answer your questions if we happen to be on line so you don’t have to wait until business hours.
Quick tip for Treasurers
I thought I might add a monthly section giving a quick tip for our treasurers and staff to help read the Xero reports and get the best out of the system we are using.
This month I thought I would do a small section on assessing viability – is your centre running with financial health. For this I find a really helpful and often overlooked report is the “Cash Summary” report which can be found under the reporting Tab.
I like to set the “compare with” to 11 months and hit update.
After this I like to scroll down to the very last line with the closing balance and look at each bulk funding month March, July and November to see if the balance is roughly holding steady or is the total cash dropping round to round. If its holding steady your centre is probably reasonably healthy, if its growing – Great, but if its dropping a few thousand dollars after every round then your centre is starting to use its reserves and should put some time into considering your costs vs income and where you can increase your revenue e.g. fundraisers, building rentals, or reduce your costs.
See example below – the balance in November is slightly higher than July which tells us the centre is operating viably.
Equity Funding Reporting
A reminder for the centres who have been asked to complete equity funding this is an MOE requirement before they can pay out further funding of this nature so is really in your centres interest to fill it in – the deadline is the 15th of March and can be accessed here:
https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/NF9ZHH2
While on this topic I want to thank the 34 centres who have completed this at the time of writing Ka Pai!
Reminder to be a good authoriser
As it’s the beginning of the year and you should all be feeling fresh and ready I just want to put out a reminder to all our members not just the Treasurers who have a role that makes them a bank authoriser to please always check before you authorise. Ask what the payment is for and never sign a blank cheque. On this note Kiwibank has determined the use of cheques brings more risk than benefit and will not be issuing or accepting cheques from the 28th of February this year.
For all centre members just a reminder that if you feel that financial information is being withheld from your management team or have concerns about possible misuse of funds you are welcome to call or email me (Marina) at [email protected] for a confidential chat and review of the accounts on your behalf at any time.
Revised Centre Budgeting Tool
Ministry of Education have updated their funding per hour. Please download the new centre budgeting tool document available here.