Treasurer Alternative?

Started by BuddyJ • 6 replies • 95 views

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BuddyJ (Maryland)
Posts: 40

Posted:

We need to find a different method for the role of our Treasurer, but we're having trouble finding the alternative - it seems that every accounting firm we've spoken with, wants to include full property management. We then searched for Bookkeepers, but have not received any responses. Possibly this job is too small, so is it even possible to find someone to just do our monthly bank reconciliation in Quickbooks & provide a detailed P&L? Most of our bills are auto-pay & our Annual Dues are bar coded so they go directly into our bank account.

We're a self-managed HOA with 79 SFH's with a $45K annual budget. We are also a 23 year old community, but the past 18 months have been a real struggle for our current treasurer. A few HOA members (with QuickBooks experience) have offered to help, but only for a very short duration. We do use a CPA to do our Fiscal Year taxes, but not all the information provided to them is correct (or entered correctly into QuickBooks).

Thank you for any suggestions or advice you may have.

SheliaH (Indiana)
Posts: 6,968

Posted:

How short would the Quickbooks assistance be? If you have, say, three people to help, ask if each can commit to three months consecutively. Three people would provide 9 months of assistance and that may be enough to get the treasurer more comfortable with the program.

What specific problems is the treasurer having? Let him or her write them down and prioritize what's really problematic. If it's education, I always suggest the community association institute (CAI) website. It has lots of low cost materials on lots of HOA Issues, including self management. See what's available on finances and what you might adapt to your community.

PS - education applies to the rest of you. All of you should be able to read the numbers and understand them, because the other homeowners may have questions that you should be able to answer accurately.

Have you spoken to someone at the association's bank? I assume this us a business account and the bank should be used to helping snall businesses (which is what an HOA is, although you're nonprofit)

Finally, is the treasurer having trouble organIzing the report? There are sample report templates all over the web (including this website- try the search function). If a board member is particularly talented in writing, he or she can work with the treasurer to prepare it for the next meeting.

Hope this helps and good luck!

PPS - you should still consider getting an accountant to review all the reports once a year to ensure nothing's missed (and audit the books every 2 years). He or she could also provide tips on making the work more manageable

If it is not right do not do it; if it is not true do not say it. Marcus Aurelius

TimB4 (Virginia)
Posts: 21,004

Posted:

We hired a bookkeeper from within the membership.

Their duties were to :

1) send assessment notices

2) collect mail from the PO box

3) track payments (we did not specify how as we wanted them to be an independent contractor)

4) Make deposits

5) track late charges

It still a fair amount of work left for the Treasurer, but it removed the day to day stuff, which lessened the load.

MichaelS56 (Minnesota)
Posts: 885

Posted:

Please take a moment to review the Maryland HOA laws that pertain to financial duties. Statue 11B-112 is one example

AnnS12 (Wisconsin)
Posts: 69

Posted:

Quote:

Posted By BuddyJ on 10/07/2026, 12:18 PM

We need to find a different method for the role of our Treasurer, but we're having trouble finding the alternative - it seems that every accounting firm we've spoken with, wants to include full property management. We then searched for Bookkeepers, but have not received any responses. Possibly this job is too small, so is it even possible to find someone to just do our monthly bank reconciliation in Quickbooks & provide a detailed P&L? Most of our bills are auto-pay & our Annual Dues are bar coded so they go directly into our bank account.We're a self-managed HOA with 79 SFH's with a $45K annual budget. We are also a 23 year old community, but the past 18 months have been a real struggle for our current treasurer. A few HOA members (with QuickBooks experience) have offered to help, but only for a very short duration. We do use a CPA to do our Fiscal Year taxes, but not all the information provided to them is correct (or entered correctly into QuickBooks).Thank you for any suggestions or advice you may have.

contact other HOA's in area and ask them who they use. We use a CPA to do our monthly reports and file our taxes only. There must be small CPA firms in your area that do this sort of work for small businesses.

type of work.

BrittanyB1 (California)
Posts: 2

Posted:

I'm a bookkeeper who works with HOAs, and I'm surprised you've had trouble finding someone. I would like to recommend looking on thumbtack there should be plenty of bookkeepers that take on monthly-only work for communities your size. The QuickBooks ProAdvisor directory is another good option. Be specific in your request (monthly reconciliation and P&L) to get more responses.

Since your CPA hasn’t always received correct information, a prior-year cleanup is just as important as the monthly reconciliations. Otherwise the errors carry forward. I’d also separate the bookkeeping from the Treasurer duties: the bookkeeper does the work, and the Treasurer reviews it. Check your bylaws and require ongoing monthly reports so the board always has current numbers. Good luck!

EliK1 (Texas)
Posts: 9

Posted:

Buddy, I'd use the short-term volunteers to write down the monthly routine you described, the bank reconciliation and the detailed P&L, rather than just keeping things afloat. Have one person do it while another records the steps, where the records live, and what still needs a decision. That gives the next person something usable on day one.

For potential bookkeepers, add the actual monthly transaction count, number of bank accounts, and a sample report with identifying details removed to your request. Ask them to price an initial trial month separately from ongoing work, with a deadline for returning the reconciled reports.

Spell out access and handover too: individual logins, no shared passwords, association-owned records, and an export when the engagement ends. Brittany's point about a prior-year cleanup is worth taking: keep a short list of entries that don't match or still need correcting, so the tax preparer gets clean numbers at year end.

— Eli

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