Finance
Financial affairs of The Augustan Society, Inc., are ultimately controlled by the Board of Directors, but are the specific assignment of the Treasurer. Day-to-day operations are delegated to the Assistant Treasurer. The Finance Committee exists to advise the Board, Treasurer, Assistant Treasurer, the Receivers General of the senior Sub-Groups, and to prepare the annual budgets for the Society and the six Sub-Groups.
Two Bank accounts are used to hold all funds other than investments:
- A checking account at Wells Fargo bank which pays no interest, and which has a debit card attached;
- A account with PayPal which pays no interest, but which is useful for online purchases and the receipt of payments.
The balance of the PayPal account is kept to about $500, unless a larger purchase is contemplated. Transfers between them are made as necessary to maintain each at the desired level.
Bookkeeping is done using GnuCash, free and open source software which is available for both Windows and Linux operating systems.
Investment Funds are held in two accounts at Morgan Stanley, and presently include GNMAs, corporate bonds, mutual funds, and a cash account bearing trivial interest.
Reporting consists of monthly statements of income and expenses against the General Fund submitted to the Board, plus the balances of a few special funds, including the Investment Fund. At present, no balance sheets are offered at any frequency. There are at present no reports of cash flow nor performance compared to the budget.
Pricing is a non-trivial task, especially considering the huge number of items on offer. There are a few guidelines:
- The raw cost of any item, plus the price of a second ounce of postage times the number of ounces or fractions thereof, should doubled and rounded up to equal the member price, with non-member prices set by applying member discounts in reverse.
- Prices are generally rounded up to the nearest dollar, save that only two-digit values will be used. This last means that after $99 and $100, the next prices should be $110, $120, $130, $140, etc.
- An alternate proposal still under consideration is to use the 5% preferred value system. After prices of $1 through $9 dollars, all others are taken from the following list, with as many multiples of ten as needed: 10, 11, 12, 13, 15, 16, 18, 20, 22, 24, 27, 30, 33, 36, 39, 43, 47, 51, 56, 62, 68, 75, 82, and 91. In this system, prices after $100 would be $110, $120, $130, $150, etc. At present, this is only being used to price used books, but it may spread.
- Used books will use the above procedure (twice the incremental first-class postage) to set the minimum price at which they will be sold, but initial pricing should be informed by market value.
- One special package, the Heraldry Art Pack, has been created and priced below the above costs as a promotional project. Profit depends on shipping it via Media Rate mail, despite the policy of shipping First Class to members. This experiment bears watching.
The rest of this section is left for development by the officers listed above.
Society funds include the following:
- General Fund
- Investment Fund
- Eagle General Fund
- Eagle Insignia Fund
- Rose General Fund
- Rose Chapel Fund
- Rose Insignia Fund
- Rose Training Fund
- SDLKJ Fund
- SDI Fund
- SDS Fund
- SDC Fund
- "Buy-A-Box" Fund
- Cataloging Fund
- Annual Fundraiser Funds
An Audit Committee may be created by the Board from time to time as they see fit. This Committee will be independent of the Treasurer, Finance Committee, and all members of same. All are expected to give the Audit Committee or an accountant they hire full cooperation.
