Reporting by the HOA Treasurer

Jim,

Our Management Company also does all the bookkeeping functions, cuts the checks (does not have signature authority) that would normally all in the roll or the Treasurer. The checks are delivered to the treasurer for signatures (2). I expect the treasurer of our HOA to have input on all the issues in the HOA. Also I expect the treasurer to help at budget time, give analysis of the financials during meetings, etc. The treasurer of our association found a bank that would give us a higher interest rate on our reserves. We have followed through on that transfer.
Because your title is Treasurer does not limit you to just dealing with the numbers. Look at any job description and you will find a statement like "other tasks as assigned". Look for other ways to put your talents to work to help your HOA.
All HOA's need strong volunteers. By running for the board you have shown that you are interested and willing to help the HOA. There are lots of ways board members can improve the association. Be creative, think outside the box and help improve your association.

Rick
HOA President.

Jim,

If your experience will be anything like mine was, you'll find out that you're actually the busiest person on the Board! I was a Treasurer for six years and was involved in almost everything the HOA did. Pretty much anything that goes on in an HOA has to go through the Treasurer at some point.

I met with each of main vendors and Reserve Analysts every year to see how things were going and if they were expecting our costs to go up the following year. Then I took that information into account when preparing a budget for the following year.

A couple of days before each Board meeting, I'd get a package in the mail from our property manager with all the checks and invoices for that month. I'd go over each one to make sure they were correct, if any were wrong, I'd call the PM and have them cut a correct check before the meeting.

At the meeting, I'd sign the checks and have another Board memebr do so as well. I'd then go over the financials line by line at the meeting, pointing out where we were under budget, on budget or over budget. That kept all the other Board members, as well as any owners in attendance, informed as to where we stood financially.

I also built a spreadsheet where I would enter the final total for every expense we had during the year. It was a great, easy to use reference when preparing a new budget. When I left the Board, I emailed the spreadsheet to the new Treasurer so he could look back at six years of expenses and costs and use it as guide for future budgets.

Don't worry, you'll have plenty of stuff to keep you involved and busy if you want to be!

Good Luck

Hi Roger,

Our management company is great and they would print out anything I wanted from them. What I found was that it was almost too much detail and information for a non professional to easily understand.

That's why I built my own simple to read and easy to understand spreadsheet. Every new Board member and anyone who wanted a copy would get a copy and understand it without any explanations. Each row down the left side was an individual espense, each column across the top was a separate year.

It made it easy for any new Board member to see exactly what we had been spending each year for anything from electricty to pest control. Once we had three or fours years of expenses on it, it became easier to estimate the next year's budget based on several years averages of expenses.

Partrick, we do this same thing whenever taking over management for an HOA. We find it very helpful initially.

Jim, attached is an example.

Jim, we use a microsoft excel spreadsheet.

Oh how did I miss it.. Yes, Roger has a good spreadsheet BUT just noticed that itd has the budgetted amount for 2007(for example) ...electricity was budgetted at only $460?? not very much. Could I add a column(someplace) stating the ACTUAL amount spent, etc?? Jim

Hi Jim,

Of course you can add as many columns as you'd like if you want to have both the budgeted amount and the actual amount spent. Excel will allow you to build a spreadsheet any way you want to.

What I found was that looking back over an eight to ten year period, it didn't really matter what we had budgeted for electricity in 2001 or water in 2003, the actual total cost for the year was the important number. Those actual costs are the guide that our current and future Treasurers can use when preparing future budgets.