Bookeeping in an Illinois \Common Interest Community

For about 20 years we have had a bookkeeper keeping the booksin our HOA. He had complete control of all the finances, other than signing the checks, which require two signatures of the "treasurer" , president and VP, who are are authorized to do this.

The "elected treasurer" who has been in office for those same 20 years , years does no duties of a treasurer.He submitted bills to the bookkeeer, who wrote the checks, returned them to him to sign and mail to vendor.The "treasurer only read the financial reports the bookkeeper at board meetings, which the bookkeeper had prepared and these were the extent of his "treasurer duties".

The association bookkeeper resigned as of January 2013 and with board approval of all board members, except the "pretand treasurer" a highly qualified,professional accounting firm , who only deals with HOA's, not just income tax returns, was hired. This accounting firm is doing an excellent job. However, the "pretand treasurer" refuses to turn over all bank account records to them and still has all bank statements from our previous bank sent to him. The accounts in this bank contain over $125,000.00 in reserve funds. By the time that "treasurer" gets around to sending copies of these bank statements to the account firm almost a month has passed and the financial reports cannot be completed.

I am not on the board any longer and my questions are: How does the board get the bank statements sent to the approved accounting firm and can this "pretend treasurer" legally have tall the bank financial information sent to him, when the only treasurer duty he perfoems is co-signing the association checks ?

Thank you for any suggestions ..

Marie,

The bank statements should be sent to the Association at the Associations mailing address.

Your Association Treasurer is not a "pretend treasurer." The individual was properly appointed to that position and serves as the Treasurer. As Treasurer, they are responsible for the accounting of the Association funds. Your Association has chosen to delegate the duties of the Treasurer to a contractor. This doesn't absolve the Treasurer from their responsibility, it only relieves them of the day to day tasks.

Personally, I would want some sort of verification process involved. Perhaps your Treasurer is doing this by reviewing the bank statements.

BTW: Having the bank statements in hand or not should not prevent a financial report from being completed, as the reports should be made from the Association records. The Bank statements serve to verify such reports.

One suggestion would be for you to volunteer to serve as the Associations Treasurer.