How to be a treasurer for an academic conference

January 17, 2006 7:52 AM

Since I figured "hey, I can do algebra!", I volunteered to be the treasurer for an academic conference coming up in a couple of months. Thing is, I've never been a treasurer before; what do I need to do?

Obviously the specifics will be given to me by the conference organizers, like where our bank account is, who will be contributing, what exactly our expenses are. What are some general pointers for being a treasurer? Specific tools I'll need? Spreadsheet design tips? Thanks!

posted by rkent to Work & Money (2 answers total)

Are you the Director/Officer of an incorporated entity? Like the student union or something? If you are a Director type individual (more formal), there are a number of responsibilities that you'll have that go along with a formal title of "Treasurer". If you were in Canada, I could point out some resources, but you may want to check into your local business centre or department of governmental affairs for some type of documentation around "responsibilities of directors and officers". Generally, you are responsible for overseeing and reporting the financial health of the organization or project to the decision makers (and if you are a Director or a Board member, you are one of the decision makers). If this is an informal group, and the title of treasurer is not associated with a formal officer position, it becomes a lot less complicated.

If your conference is associated with another body that has specific policies and procedures associated with the handling of money, payment of bills and expenses and other financial matters, you'll probably want to get copies of those and familiarize yourself with them.

Generally, a spreadsheet will do it, unless they already have accounting software and procedures in place. You will probably need to be producing a balance sheet (how much is left in the bank, how much came in this month, how much did we spend this month, etc) every month, and reporting on expenses. If a budget has been provided with expected outlays in specific categories (office expenses, equipment, materials, salaries), you'll need to report on expenses by category, and report new money as it arrives.

I have found it useful to prepare an expense spreadsheet with a list of budget lines down the side, and sources of income at the top (each source getting a separate row). Months for the fiscal year run from left to right across the top. Then create subsheets for different categories of income- this will be important if you are spending grant money that you need to report on in a specific or detailed way. Then report expenses on each subsheet, and have a master sheet that sums all the information from the subsheets and that shows all the expenses and income from all sources on one sheet, which is easier to review and approve.

Note: I am not an accountant or financial expert, just someone that has some very basic experience with financial operations and with governance issues as they relate to budgeting.
posted by Cyrie at 10:09 AM on January 17, 2006

I did this for a conference about a year ago. One thing that helped a lot was to get the materials from the previous year's treasurer. He'd created a spreadsheet of the planned and actual budgets, along with a sheet check register. I had to reimburse a lot of people so I created some basic reimbursement forms.

The biggest challenge for me was keeping everything organized and figuring out a proposed budget (you would not believe how expensive hotel caterers are!). Once I developed an organizational system (folders for incoming invoices, contributions, paid invoices, reimbursements requests, etc), things went smoothly -- although it was pretty hairy toward the end when it wasn't clear that our income projections were accurate (they were accurate enough).

If you drop me an email (in profile) I'd be happy to send you some templates.
posted by i love cheese at 4:56 PM on January 17, 2006