Self-Managed Auditing Debits and Deposits

Our association is self managed and I've been a treasurer for a few years. We don't use software for managing this because it is not that sophisticated... however, it is time consuming to ensure all checks are deposited, some people pay 3-months in advance and some deposits are lumped together so you have to look at each deposited check pdf online to verify who has paid.

I'm a software engineer and was considering writing a simple audit trail that would summarize expected, actual and aggregate deposits on demand. This would keep a historical record so you could contextually visualize the expected, actual and aggregate values to see if they trend back together (for those people paying irregularly). Further you could put an alert on debits if they exceed configurable rules.

Why do this:
If self managed, this reduces manual effort - viewing bank statements requires time
If not self managed, opens the audit trail to anyone interested, independent of accounting software already used
Enables historical view of expectations and pin points deviations

Please share your ideas for handling this and if you think you might benefit from something like it.
Many thanks

We're self managed and use Quickbooks, prior to that the treasurer just used Excel to track everything. Our previous treasurer set up Quickbooks, that was a fair amount of work and she had some accountant assistance to set it up. Once up and running, the level of expertise to use it is pretty minimal, probably easier than maintaining the accounts in Excel.

To John's point, if the board can't find a willing and able owner (on or off the board) to manage the accounts using Quickbooks as it is already set up, I'd be the first to say they need to hire an outside bookkeeper/accountant and not expect to do it themselves.

Mark,

We are self managed, 130 lots.


It is not clear if you utilize paper ledgers, Excel ledgers or no ledgers at all to track your Assessment payments.
We initially utilized paper ledgers and have transitioned to excel.

We have always utilized excel for our Income and Expense Statement (broken in to months) and our budget summary.
We utilize the check register as our actual operating funds ledger.

Our CPA had no issue with auditing either method.

Perhaps some simple tips can be helpful:

1) When we make a deposit, we always write the name of the person/company the check came from along with the lot number on the deposit slip.

2) Based on the CPAs advice, we have copied the jpg of the check from the bank, along with a copy of the deposit slip, in a folder titled with the date of the deposit.

At the end of each year, I scan transfer the records onto a CD/DVD for archiving.


As others have said, you have to expect that the person who comes after you can barley keep a family check book, has zero to minimal computer experience and is running Windows 3.1 or MAC 10.2 (i.e. the program must be backwards compatible)


I will state that going to excel ledgers greatly reduced the time I spent with paper ledgers.
A Treasurer should always view and reconcile bank statements.
An auditor will always review bank statements to verify the financial records.


Typically the actual ledgers are not provided to anyone interested. Due to privacy issues and perhaps State laws, only the ledger for the specific lot of a member is available to that member. I only provide ledgers to the Board of a lot in collections and only if they ask. Other then that, ledgers are available to the Treasurer, bookkeeper (if one is employed) and auditor.

However, deposit slips and bank statements are available to anyone. If one were so inclined (or worst, if the records were lost) ledgers can be recreated with those documents (as the deposit slips had the lot number that was being credited identified).


Can be an good tool.
Realistically, very very few will ever utilize it.