Treasurer Hat
Currently worn by User:Entropy
Holds a role on the board (by legal requirement)
Current responsibilities (not limited to):
- paying rent
- managing our bank accounts such that we can do this (eg with a fintech account)
- paying utilities
- receiving money for sublets
- receiving money from members
- stripe
- cash
- other methods
- depositing cash/other methods of getting money
- documenting transactions
- creating financial reports
external services that access is needed:
probably also needs member services admin and stuff.
How to Treasurer
The hackerspace funds are currently used to pay for recurring bills and our financial obligations.
We currently do not have a set system for discretionary / capital improvement expenses, but they should be run by the membership for consensus and crowdfunding opportunities.
Cash flow management
The current treasurer is User:maia, who is the right contact for access to our bank accounts and inquiries regarding the cashbox.
Currently, we maintain operating funds across two accounts:
- BECU (primary): Day-to-day operations, member dues income, cash deposits, most of our money stays here by default
- Mercury (secondary): Rent payments (landlord wants to be paid via ACH), recurring Smol Law lawyer fee (via a single-purpose debit card)
Every two weeks, collect everything in the cash box and put it in our BECU account (unless the money is earmarked for a specific crowdfunding project, in which case arrangements are made with the point-of-contact directly). If the money is earmarked for a specific member, go into Stripe and give them credit.
In addition to the treasurer:
- User:Eliri, User:A and User:M have debit cards to our BECU account
- User:Eliri has access to our Mercury account.
- User:M and User:Finn have access to Stripe.
Paying bills
Every month:
- A few days before we have to pay rent, log into Mercury and transfer just enough money to pay our rent.
- Pay the landlord: log into Mercury, schedule money to Gelb Building Inc for the last business day of the month. The landlord likes us to mention in the transaction memo that it is for /dev/hack rent.
- Pay our Trash @ https://www.e-billexpress.com/ebpp/RecologyKC/
- Pay our electricity bill (only once every 2 months) @ https://myutilities.seattle.gov/eportal/. Note that Seattle lets you do short-term payment plans without any interest, which could be used to break up a high two-month bill.
- Atlas Networks and the alarm company take money from our BECU account automatically, so there's nothing to do here other than documenting the actual transactions when they hit.
Document all the transactions on ledger. User:Maia likes to create Liabilities entries at the beginning of the month in anticipation of the bills coming in, but this is optional.
Stripe for cash payments
Some members prefer to pay by cash.
onboarding members with stripe accounts without an associated card
so best way is to create a single-use coupon code worth $50 and give it to them, and then this follows
https://dashboard.stripe.com/acct_1N6dipDnrGrK8UDJ/coupons/bcTJ5Kh7
renewing memberships that are given with cash payments
Once a member has a stripe subscription set up via the above flow or the default member-services credit-card flow, you can re-up their accounts.
These members usually have Stripe subscriptions set up, just without a payment method attached. They are then asked to put money in an envelope labeled with their name and drop it in our cash box.
When money for them is collected, add credit to their Stripe subscription so that it doesn't expire.
To do this, look up the member by their handle in Stripe (and if their government name is showing, it would be helpful to take a moment to edit their name to just read their handle):
There are then a couple of ways to proceed:
- Clicking on the three dots, select "Adjust credit balance", then do a credit adjustment of $50.00. For the internal note section, mention that they've paid cash.
- Or, we've also set up a coupon that does functionally the same thing. Click "Apply coupon" then select the "Cash" coupon, which applies a one-time $50.00 discount to their invoice.