Daniel Mayer wrote:
But that leaves the issue of
different currencies which makes graphing grand totals
a bit more complicated... Argh! :)
In the report you could show three columns for each currency: 1) total
in that currency, 2) current exchange rate, and 3) US$ equivalent
I was also
wondering if Wikimedia's accounting
ledegers are open to the public.
Not really right now. We still have to figure out what
is legal to show given our set-up. But account totals
should be fine (charities very often publicize totals
during donation drives). And of course any
expenditures need to be logged and deducted from the
totals (as well as transfers - I plan to track all of
that and make it public on the foundation's website).
All that requires time to set-up though. Hopefully
I'll have something substantial to show in late
January.
This should be easy. :-) Set up a table with a column for "Date",
"Description" and each account.
On that you could show:
1) Daily total donations with relevant amounts in the appropriate
columns in that currency,
2) Expenditures as negative amounts from the account used for
payment, and
3) Transfers as negatives in the source account, and currency
equivalent positives in the target account.
Column totals can be done after each entry, or (to look less cluttered)
periodically as required. This will give a quickly set up overview that
can be easily understood by readers. Other accounting features can be
developed later to cope with reporting and other legal demands.
I plan to start figuring out the dos and
don't of grant writing later in January. This may be
an area where it would make sense to hire a
professional grant writer but I still want to do some
research on the subject anyway. At the very least it
will inform us better about what we should tell the
grant writer.
I think that it is much too early to think of a professional grant
writer, or even if we will take that route at all. If it gets to the
point where seeking grants is the way to go we should begin by looking
to see if we already have those skills available. We should also
examine possible grant application forms to see if they are so
complicated that we can't do them ourselves, and if making such
applications will need any kind of structural madifications to the
orgsanization. Financial statements are often required, but we should
be developing those anyway.
Ec