| NESFA® Treasury Procedures – Table of Contents | Last updated 15-Nov-2012 |
For its convenience, NESFA maintains advance accounts with many of its members.
Advance accounts are named AD-name, where name is usually the member's last name, but may include a comma and a first name or initial or even two initials separated by an ampersand.
The advance account allows the club to advance money to a member who is anticipated to be spending money on behalf of the club in cases where it is inconvenient for the club to write a check directly—it isn't right that they should have to carry the float themselves. The normal procedure is that a person who will be buying something gets an advance check which is estimated to cover the outlay for a reasonable period—a month or two is typical. That check is a debit (charge) against the advance account, which is an asset account recording at the start that so-and-so owes NESFA the amount of the check.
Alternatively, if the person anticipating buying stuff for NESFA has a NESFA debit card (guidelines are TBS separately), they may use that debit card to buy the stuff directly or use the card to get a cash advance (which would be charged to their advance account as though it were a check).
As the person buys things for the club, they get receipts and turn them in using an expense report, the expenses are credited against the person's advance account.
As a practical matter, most members prefer to leave their advance accounts open rather than getting a check, buying a whatever and then settling the balance due. Provided that the amount in the advance account owed NESFA doesn't build up inordinately, this is not a problem. It is the Treasurer's duty to notice when a member is owed a significant sum of money and offer to pay it. It is the member's duty not to abuse advance accounts by building up too large a sum owed NESFA. If that happens, the Treasurer is responsible for cutting off further advances on that person's advance account until it gets back to a reasonable balance.
Under certain circumstances, advance accounts may be used to purchase NESFA merchandise and to pay for Boskone memberships and NESFA dues.
When a person pays the amount they owe by use of a check or cash which gets deposited to our checking account, or by use of a credit card (which also ends up in our checking account), record the income using the usual Tasks > Receipts from the menu bar, and using the item Advance Account, and then use the Journal menu item to change the dummy account to the correct AD- account.
Boskones also have advance accounts which are separate from the NESFA advance accounts. When a Boskone closes, it is required that the Boskone treasurer transfer advance account balances to NESFA when the same person is owed money by Boskone and owes money to NESFA. It is prohibited for the Boskone treasurer to write a repayment check in that case. Other advance accounts may be optionally transferred as is convenient for the treasurers.