OVERVIEW:
DETAILS:
Total Assets and Cash on Hand: Since the beginning of FY97/98 our total assets have increased from $1,748K to over $2,000K. Most of this is encumbered in our NSF Trust Funds ($1,475K). During this period we published On Rope II and Cave Minerals of the World without a loan from an external source. While we are financially strong our current Cash on Hand is too low. We started FY97/98 with $29K Cash on Hand, but in one 24-hour period in January Dave Irving wrote checks that totaled over $177K. They included bills to print Cave Minerals of the World (CMW - $99K), the December ’97 Journal of Cave and Karst Studies, and the January ’98 NSS News. These drove the balance in our checking accounts below what we need for our normal operations so we borrowed $22K from our NSS Building, Convention, and Equipment Restricted Funds since their restrictions are self-imposed. We also asked the NSF to reimburse the costs we incurred for awards, grants, and the new NSS office computers. We are delaying large discretionary costs such as printing the 1997 Speleo Digest and 1998 Members Manual until we rebuild our unrestricted cash reserve to a level that will sustain normal operations and allow us to execute our FY98/99 Capital Budget.
Exhibit #3 provides an analysis of our projected cash flow for the remainder of FY97/98 and all of FY98/99. With our Cash on Hand so low Camille Duke and Dave Irving have been and will continue to closely manage the timing of our deposits and check-writing transactions for the next several months. We are also asking the Board of Governors for authority to obtain a loan of up to $25K just in case we need it. If dues revenue and bookstore sales remain good and we delay some of our discretionary publications we should not need the loan. We plan to repay the $22K we borrowed from our NSS Building, Convention, and Equipment Restricted Funds and repay any loan we obtain from an external source (for example NSF) by FY99/00, and hopefully a lot sooner.
NSF: We’ve asked the NSF to report the balance in our Trust Funds on a calendar quarter basis (3/31, 6/31, etc) rather than at the end of fiscal year quarters (1/31, 4/31, etc) so we could obtain a report of our NSF Trust Fund balances in time to include in our financial reports which are on a fiscal year quarter basis. This is especially important to avoid having to wait until sometime in May for the NSF’s final fiscal year report so we can close the NSS books at the end of our fiscal year on April 31.
Fiscal Year Closeout: In the past it’s taken several months to close the NSS books at the end of a fiscal year as we wait for the NSF report and requests for reimbursement from the various committees. But now that we’ve integrated our books and most of the accounting is done at the NSS office we must close the books on April 31st. All deposits and checks written starting on 1 May will be allocated to the new fiscal year. We’ve asked the committee chairman to submit their final expenses against the expiring fiscal year budget by early April. The cost to print the May NSS News issue will be shifted into the FY 98/99 budget and the cost to print the May 99 issue will be shifted into the next fiscal year so there will be no effect after FY97/98.
1997 NSS Convention: The Missouri NSS Convention committee closed their last NSS bank account and forwarded a a final check in the amount of $10,475.73. They reported income of $127,657 and expenses of $114,479 based upon 997 attendees. Earlier we received $2,702.42 when they closed their account in Sullivan. Since we donated $2,000 to Onondaga Cave the final surplus for the 1997 Convention was $ 11,178.15. This is in addition to their prior repayment of the $2,500 advance we provided and their reimbursement of $3,500 for liability insurance we procured on their behalf. Doug Medville is reviewing their travel expenses with the convention staff.
Pursuant to the Board motion passed at our June 1997 meeting the 1997Convention surplus will be deposited in a restricted fund to cover future convention losses.
NSS Office Accounting Environment: Several years ago we purchased NSSTrak software to manage our membership records and LedgerMaster software to do our accounting. We have been using NSSTrak for some time but delayed installing LedgerMaster until we developed the new NSS Chart of Accounts. We installed LedgerMaster last summer and started to use it to maintain a second accounting system in parallel with our current DacEasy-based accounting system just to make sure it worked. Then last fall Camille reported the NSSTrak and LedgerMastrer data bases were too big in aggregate for our NSS office computer environment. She was seeing major errors in the LedgerMaster system such as wrong invoice numbers. In February 1998 Tom Rea and Phil Winkler resolved the problem by installing new Pentium II computers in the office with plenty of memory and new server software. Camille plans to get LedgerMaster completely online now that the new computers have been installed then run it in parallel with our current DacEasy-based accounting system to the end of April 1998. At that point she should be able to go solo with LedgerMaster.
Phil will install a DataEase/ODBC driver on one of the old computers to permit dial in access to a shadow copy of our financial data directly from any Windows program which supports ODBC (WP, Excel, Access, etc.). This should provide more complete and timely financial information to the Board of Governors, the officers, and agents of the Treasurer.
NCRC Finances: For the first time the NSS operating budget (Enclosure #1) provides visibility into internal NCRC financial transactions whose value exceed $50K. FY98/99 should be a transition year as the NCRC financial transactions are fully integrated into the NSS corporate accounting system.
Capital Expenditures:
The total cost to publish the new On Rope was $58K for 10,044 copies of which some were distributed as samples and author rebates. As the books are sold we will pay an additional $20K in royalties to the authors. It will cost about $7.75/copy.
The total cost to publish Cave Minerals of the World was $126K for 5,143 copies of which some were distributed as samples and author rebates. As the books are sold we will pay an additional $10K in royalties to the authors. $100K was budgeted to publish it in the FY97/98 Capital Budget. It will cost about $26.50/copy.
INDIVIDUAL ACTIVITY:
Camille Duke continued to deposit all corporate NSS income and pay all office and most NSS committee expenses. She plans to get LedgerMaster completely online now that the new computers have been installed at the NSS office and then run it in parallel with our current DacEasy-based accounting system to the end of April 1998. At that point she should be able to go solo with LedgerMaster.
Dave Irving continued to pay office staff salary and benefits, NSS News, Journal of Caves and Karst Studies, and other NSS publication expenses. He worked with our CPA to file our FY96/97 federal tax return in January and prepared the FY97/98 six-month fiscal report He was an active participant in developing the overall FY98/99 budget
Cheryl Jones prepared the FY97/98 NSS operating and capital budgets (Enclosures #1 and #2) based upon dues income projections provided by Dave Irving, bookstore sales projections provided by Tom Rea, and expense projections provided by the other officers. She mapped the new Chart of Accounts to budget line items and facilitated the EC discussions that ultimately result in the budget presented for Board approval. She also prepared the Cash Flow Analysis.
Bill Stringfellow continued to improve the convention section of the NSS Chart of Accounts based upon his experience as treasurer of the 1998 NSS convention. He also served as acting NCRC Financial Officer after Marla Steele resigned while NCRC advertises in the NSS News for a replacement. He also reconciled the 1999 NSS convention bank account.
Scott Fee continued to perform the accounting for NSS News advertising and reconciling bank statements from the 1998 NSS convention. Debra Quamen completed her role as 1997 NSS convention treasurer. Peggy Kesner and Nick Schaer have bank accounts and budgets in place for the 1999 and 2000 NSS conventions, but there have been few financial transactions to date. Gary Moss is reconciling the NSS office bank accounts.
Ted Kayes continues to be responsible for our NSS insurance policies.
Mike Gunderloy was appointed as the chairman of the NSS Personal Property Committee last December subject to BOG confirmation at our March 1998 meeting. Mike responded to an NSS News notice soliciting candidates. Since then he’s aggressively collected information form all NSS committees and developed a data base in Access.
FUTURE ACTIVITIES:
Our priority between now and the Summer 1998 BOG meeting will be to continue to keep up with the bills. Other tasks include:
Paul Stevens
NSS Secretary/Treasurer