Finance
Financial affairs of The Augustan Society, Inc., are ultimately controlled by the Board of Directors, but are the specific assignment of the Treasurer. The Finance Committee exists to advise the Board, Treasurer, the Receivers General of the senior Sub-Groups, and to prepare the annual budgets for the Society and the seven 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 checking account is kept to about $5000 to cover regular monthly expenses. The balance of the PayPal account is kept to about $500, unless a larger purchase is contemplated. Transfers between them and the Investment Funds 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 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, but is based primarily on the raw incremental costs, then doubled and rounded up to the members' discounted price, with the non-member price being set at 125% of the member price.
Society funds include the following:
- General Fund
- Investment Fund
- Eagle General Fund
- Eagle Insignia Fund
- Rose General Fund
- Rose Insignia Fund
- Rose Chapel Fund
- Rose Training Fund
- SDLKJ Fund
- SDI Fund
- SDS Fund
- SDC Fund
- "Buy-A-Box" Fund
- Cataloging Fund
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.
