Group Budgets
Group Budgets & Accounts
If you want to set up an account to contain the budget of a LHS group, such as a Project, Team, or Club, you will need to do a number of things.
Agreements
- Agree who is the Treasurer for the account, and how payments get authorised (for example, two people in the Team have to sign them off). Keep a record of purchases/payments, for example in the LHS wiki.
- Agree how often the whole group gets to see the accounts, and how.
- Agree with the LHS Treasurer (currently Tony Abbey) about how they will get the records of use of your account, and how often.
- Agree with the LHS membership about how much money, if any, is transferred from the main LHS budget to the group account; note that some groups have donated money, or money from work they've done, already.
Set-up
- The group Treasurer sets-up an account which has a debit/credit card (a debit card is greatly preferred); the LHS Finance Team (which is currently just the Treasurer) will recommend one or more possible ways of doing this. Why not just have a PayPal account? Because of the PayPal charges; PayPal works best if you only use it for payments. If the group Treasurer steps-down you need procedures in place to ensure the account stays with the group, without further involvement of the ex-group Treasurer.
- The group Treasurer sets-up a PayPal account so that online payments can be made, and online donations can be made to the group - please remember PayPal charges the receiver of money, roughly 60p in every ten quid. Remember to use the group name, not that of any individual, for this, and an e-mail address which is not tied to any particular individual (don't forget who has the PayPal password) - ask the LHS IT Team about this.
Running
- Put some money in the account (maybe by asking the LHS Treasurer), and use it for the group activities.
- Topping-up the group account, from the LHS one, will not usually occur more often than once a quarter, though a General Meeting (or if it's really urgent the Directors) can make a special transfer. If LHS is short of money then there will be no top-up, and in exceptional circumstances money may be asked (preferably by a General Meeting) to be returned.
Please remember, the money in your group account is LHS money, with the exception of special cases like the Coder Dojo. The reason that the account exists is convenience, not because the money is 'special group money', in some way; if a group closes then the money goes back into the LHS account. It's all about getting on with the hacking, after all!
