Skip to main content
HomeFinancial Management

Financial Management

The treasurer manages the income and expenses of the Village. We recommend QuickBooks Online for managing expenses and maintaining an overall understanding of the Village's financial position. RunMyVillage is used to keep track of income. We recommend reviewing the tutorial video "Managing Payments, Charges, and Credits" which explains how ClubExpress handles transaction charges,  payments and credits. In the documents library are examples on how to set up the chart of accounts for a Village.

The treasurer prepares a budget listing all the anticipated income and expenses. Each month the treasurer should prepare a statement of income and expenses which can be compared to the budget. This is actually fairly easy using QuickBooks. The treasurer uses QuickBooks to record (and possibly write) all checks. QuickBooks keeps track of which expense account the check goes with.
QuickBooks online allows more than one person access to the Villages accounts and eases the succession process for a new treasurer. 

Reconciling Deposits with Income Accounts

 

Each month, once the monthly bank statement is available, the treasurer needs to reconcile the recorded income and expenses with the bank statement. This writeup describes how to manage your Village using cash accounting. 

 

Income details are recorded within RunMyVillage.  Income consists of membership dues, donations, and/or event fees.  When checks arrive, they are documented in the record of the person who made the payment and then deposited.  If a person pays online with a credit card, the transaction is automatically recorded and the money is automatically deposited in the Village's account three times per month.  If a check arrives at the “office” or the Village's Post Office box, the treasurer deposits them once or twice a month.   It is critical that checks for membership fees, donations, and event payments are each deposited with separate deposit slips.  That way, when the bank account is reconciled in QuickBooks, each deposit total can be matched to the proper account without needing to identify the purpose of individual checks. 

There are two different ways of keeping track of the Villages finances:  Cash accounting and Accrual Accounting.  Cash accounting records income when it is received and expenses when paid.  Accrual accounting is more complex, recording income in three steps: when the commitment is made, when the check is received, and when the check deposit is reported in the account.  Similarly, expenses are recorded when the order is placed, when the check is mailed and when the check clears.

 
Most non-profit organizations use cash accounting.  Corporations and larger for-profit businesses use accrual accounting by IRS regulation.

 It is not necessary to identify individual checks within a deposit in QuickBooks when using cash accounting.  Only the total for each income account is needed.  RunMyVillage provides reports that map credit card deposits to income accounts so that the amount deposited into the account from credit card payments can be allocated to income accounts, i.e., dues, event income, or donations.

In summary, to balance the accounts in QuickBooks, two or three monthly deposits for memberships, donations and/or events need to be manually recorded and monthly credit card  totals in each income category recorded from a RunMyVillage report.


RunMyVillage also offers a direct integration between its software and QuickBooks.  Using this approach requires using the accrual method of accounting (at least for income).  If all transactions were done by credit card this integration would be very useful and require less work.  However, if some transactions are by credit card and some by check then because the Village is using the accrual method, each check must be accounted for in three separate double-entry transactions.  This creates much more work, particularly when identifying each check in each deposit.

Setting up this option requires coordinating income accounts between RunMyVillage and QuickBooks.  If you use this approach, there is extensive documentation available through the support tab of the control panel.

Donation Management
 Donations are a critical source of income for many Villages.   The Donations function allows you to establish funds into which members and non-members can donate. A number of options are provided to control fund visibility, target and whether anonymous donations are allowed. Donations are processed through the same payments processing module that’s used for memberships and event registrations. On the admin side, this function also allows clubs to track and report on non-cash donations.  The treasurer or admin can set up different funds that donors can designate and control how donations are handled.  Donation Fund Administration.  
Numerous reports are available to help the treasurer know which funds have receive donations.

To view what a donor sees click Donations.  

For a video tutorial on this function watch the video on donations.

Mileage Payments to Volunteers

 
Your Village may decide to reimburse volunteers for mileage.  If so, your board of directors should set the reimbursement rate. As guidance, the IRS rates are:


Beginning on January 1, 2020, the IRS allows mileage rates for the use of a car (also vans, pickups or panel trucks) as:
57.5 cents per mile driven for business use,
17 cents per mile driven for medical or moving purposes, and
14 cents per mile driven in service of charitable organizations.
 
If your village decides to reimburse for mileage, the easiest way is to ask volunteers to email a request once per month giving, for each trip, the name of the member, the date of the member, and the mileage driven.  Consider establishing a dedicated email address such as mileage@yourVillage.org which is both retained online and forwarded to the treasurer.  The treasurer can then cut a check once per month to each member who requests it.  As an expense item, mileage payments are individually recorded and totaled in QuickBooks.  There is no need to record these payments in the volunteer's profile in RunMyVillage.

You might expect that 10% of volunteers will request reimbursement.  The figure will depend on the reimbursement rate and the percentage of very long trips, e.g., in rural areas with long drives to medical appointments.

If a volunteer chooses not to request reimbursement, they can take a charitable deduction for the miles they drove. If your Village uses the Volunteer Self-Service module (VSS) they can review (and print a list of) all the services they provided using the online VSS screen. Go to the tab for "Past Requests" and filter for the last year.Volunteer Self-Service 

Membership Renewal Processing

 
This may seem a long way off when you are first setting up a Village, but the software is flexible and fairly automatic.  You need to decide if memberships will renew on the anniversary of joining (recommended) or at the same time each year.  You set how many email notices are send, when they are sent, and what they say.  You can select whether renewal notices are via email or have paper notices will be sent by mail.  You can tailor the renewal notices to your Village.System Email Manager 
 
Reports are available to alert the Membership team about members whose memberships are coming up for renewal or have not been renewed in case.  These are available from the control panel in the membership tab, reports block.