[Eg-oversight-board] 2016 Conference reconciliation

Thu Jul 21 12:20:36 EDT 2016

Grace,

I echo Amy's thanks.  This had to have taken an exorbitant amount of time.
While I haven't taken the time to go through all the intricacies of the SFC
agreement, it is POOR practice to begin taking any "donation" prior to the
end of an event, at the very least.  It's fuzzy accounting.  I'm hopeful
that we'll have heard from NC regarding the missing registration monies.

On Thu, Jul 21, 2016 at 11:37 AM, Amy Terlaga <terlaga at biblio.org> wrote:

> Grace--
>
> Thank you for that detailed summary.  I can't imagine the number of hours
> spent analyzing this.  And I did make it to the end.
>
> Hope to be there this afternoon for at least the middle/end.
>
> Amy
>
> On Thu, Jul 21, 2016 at 11:25 AM, Grace Dunbar <gdunbar at esilibrary.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Hi all,
>> I have spent quite a bit of time attempting to track down all the
>> anomalies in the Host Budget and the SFC ledger.  I also commandeered quite
>> a bit of assistance from Galen. :)
>>
>> Here are my findings thus far:
>> *RECEIVABLES*
>>
>> The income amount for Sponsorships was recorded correctly as $21,200.00.
>> As far as I know, all those payments were received.  Awaiting
>> confirmation from the SFC. But this all looks to be correct.
>>
>> The income amount for Exhibitors was recorded as $6,740.00.  This is $285
>> less than should have been recorded.  The total seems to have been missing
>> an additional registration for Ebsco ($220) and a pre-conference
>> registration ($65) for MassLNC.  With those factored in, the amounts now
>> balance for exhibitors.
>> * Note that exhibitors were given the option of adding additional
>> registrations on their exhibitor agreement form so those were not tracked
>> along with the people who registered through EventBrite.
>>
>> This brings us to a corrected total of $28,225 for exhibitor payments.
>>
>>  Now we get into some odd issues with the attendee registrations.
>> The Host Budget spreadsheet matches the EventBrite numbers for
>> registrations for the conference and pre-conferences.
>> The total registrations sans bad debt/refunds looks to be correct at
>> $48,985.00.
>>
>> However, there a few issues here that are making this difficult to
>> reconcile with the actual ledger.
>> 1.) If the library requested to be invoiced  EventBrite knows nothing
>> about actual payment (or lack of payment) or refunds.
>> 2.) When refunds occur, depending on when the refund is requested, there
>> are certain fees or portions of fees that might be assessed by
>> EventBrite/PayPal/SFC. This makes is difficult to reconcile to the penny
>> particularly in light of the more challenging aspects of the SFC's ledger
>> system.
>> 3.) Registrants names are not always listed in the ledger if a library
>> pays by check (for example) for 4 registrants.
>> 4.) Bad debt.  There was a registration from a library system for 4
>> attendees who requested an invoice.  The web site stated that invoices were
>> non-refundable.  The library ended up wanting to send 3 attendees instead
>> of 4 and refused to recognize the invoice.  They ended up just ignoring the
>> invoice (telling us they were going to "wait for it to expire", which isn't
>> actually a thing that happens in reality) and they re-registered the 3
>> people who were going to attend and paid for them with a CC.  This was
>> annoying but shouldn't have been a crippling problem in the books...
>> however, it ended up being difficult to account for because of the way the
>> SFC was taking its cut.  I will address that down at the end of the email.
>>
>> *PAYBLES*
>>
>> The amounts paid for the Band, the Cake, the Keynote gift, EventBrite
>> registration fees, and the Food/AV bill from the Sheraton were all
>> completely correct and easily reconciled. The total was $66,832.56.
>>
>> On the Host spreadsheet, the amount for the SFC donation was incorrectly
>> listed as $7,009.50.  At 10% of their original total it ought to have been
>> $7,692.50.  With the corrections I have mentioned above, the correct amount
>> should be $7,721.00.
>>
>> Additionally, there are the afore mentioned refunds and bad debt issues
>> which could be as high as $1,557.13 but I would need a magic wand and some
>> fairy dust to be certain.  Or maybe another 2 days and a CPA.
>>
>> Lastly for payables, I can find no record in the SFC ledger of a payment
>> for the NCDCR attendees (The folks from the NC Cardinal org.)  Their
>> registrations in EventBrite are all marked as "Paid by Check", however the
>> SFC has no payment listed in our ledger. The total of all these referenced
>> registrations that seem to not have payment recorded is $3,930.00.  I have
>> emailed my post-conference contact at NC and asked if they could confirm
>> payment - perhaps the check got lost in the mail.
>>
>> So,we're closer to answers for closing out the conference.  Once I have
>> some idea of what happened with the NC payment we should be able to
>> reconcile with some certainty.
>>
>> ~~~~~~~~~~~
>> To be honest, this process is being made approximately 400 times more
>> difficult than it ought to be due to the in-house ledger system the SFC is
>> using.  I know we've all had out moments of confusion regarding the reports
>> we get... for example, why income is reported and recorded as a negative
>> number.  But the problems with the system seem to be much deeper.  As I've
>> investigated the conference reconciliation a few things stuck out.
>> 1.) Payment date is not recorded.
>> 2.) Ledger cannot be reconciled easily with registrations.  Double entry
>> (or triple) is required when payment is received to ensure ledger,
>> EventBrite, and budget tracking spreadsheet match.
>> 3.) This brings me to what I mentioned above with the SFC cut.  In the
>> case of investigating the specific "bad debt" write off I detailed above, I
>> noticed there was a peculiar entry for $130 related to this case.  $130
>> didn't match what I initially thought it did (two pre-conference
>> registrations).  Instead, to the best of my ability to discern, it appears
>> to be a write off for lazy and incorrect accounting purposes.  According to
>> the Fiscal Sponsorship agreement, the SFC gets a 10% "donation" of *gross
>> income*.  From looking at the ledger, it appears that when
>> registrations/sponsorships are invoiced, the SFC is transferring its 10%
>> cut immediately.
>> In the case of this mysterious $130 as far as I can tell, it breaks down
>> like this.
>> The library was invoiced $880 for 4 registrations at the early bird rate
>> of $220.
>> The SFC took it's 10% cut of $88.
>> The library refused to pay the invoice.
>> The library re-registered 3 attendees at the regular rate of $250.
>> The library paid $750 by CC.
>> The SFC did NOT take a 10% cut of that payment.
>> The SFC created a bad debt entry of $130.
>> 10% of $130 is equal to the $13 difference between $88 and $75.  This
>> seems to have been done to avoid returning the $88 and taking the correct
>> amount of $75.
>>
>> Not only is this bad accounting practice, I don't believe it is
>> reflective of the agreement we have with them.  It seems reasonable that
>> the SFC should only be transferring their donation after payment is
>> received.
>>
>> Apologies for the long email but it's been quite an eye opening
>> investigation.  I understand that this is coming a little late for
>> substantive discussion at our meeting today but I wanted to at least get
>> the ball rolling while we wait for other answers.
>>
>> Kudos if you made it to the end of the email!
>> Grace
>>
>> --
>> Grace Dunbar, Vice President
>> Equinox - Open Your Library
>> gdunbar at esilibrary.com
>> 1-877-OPEN-ILS  |  www.esilibrary.com
>>
>>
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>>
>
>
> --
> +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+
> Amy Terlaga
> Director of Member Services
> Bibliomation, Inc.
> 24 Wooster Avenue
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> terlaga at biblio.org
>
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Library
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