Money Tools (MToaS 44)

This Thing could not have come at a better time. As of yesterday, I am no longer the treasurer for St. Cloud OUT, a small community group that, among other things, puts on a GLBTA Film Festival every year. As I was thinking about how best to hand over the checkbook after four years as treasurer, I was stumped. I had the checkbook information on Quicken, but what if the next treasurer doesn't have access to the program? How best to handle the transfer of checkbook and responsibilities?

When I came on board as treasurer four years ago, the books were a mess. Yes, all the records had been kept, but messily so. It took me a couple of months to figure out what was what, and even then there were a couple of things that I looked at, pondered, and finally gave up on. What I want, as someone who's put years into a small, sometimes fragile, very worthwhile community organization, is a way to make leadership transitions smooth and provide the checks and balances to make sure that the funds are being handled properly.

Mint.com and ClearCheckbook both look like reasonable ways to answer this question. My concern with Mint.com is that our bank is not included in their on-line service (ReadWriteWeb complains that only large banks are included, and why is that when this could be such a boon to smaller banks?). I couldn't find a way to manually upload information, but perhaps I'll look again. What I like about Mint.com, if the bank is included, is that (from the sounds of it) transaction information is automatically uploaded and e-mailed out to one or two accounts. No one needs to find the time to manually do the job - and we all know how hard it is go get to those "little" jobs, especially when it's a volunteer duty and not our real work.

This sounds like such a good idea for community groups and non-profits. In my experience, few of us have treasurers with professional accounting experience. Greater transparency and checks and balances (ie. the account transaction e-mails go to both Treasurer and Chair) would only help the fiscal health of the organization.

Makes me want to stand on a mountaintop and shout it out to all FOL groups. Makes me want to change banks so that we can use Mint.com.

ClearCheckbook also looks like a useful option. You don't have to rely on the bank being part of their system, you can manually upload information (although, when I tried uploading my Quicken file it turned all the dates since Feb. 2002 to Jan. 1, 1970. That was aggravating!). Again, lots of options. I have a meeting scheduled Monday to sit down with the new Treasurer and Chair, and I plan to show them both Mint and ClearCheckbook and recommend that we go with one or the other.

As to the other links on this Thing: some more useful than others, of course. It was nice to find out that I was correct about which gas stations had the lowest prices in our area. I loved MadCity Chickens (love those Madison folks!). Made me wistful. I grew up on a small hobby farm with lots of chickens, goats, horses, etc. I love the big brown hens, and have often thought it would be fun to have a few (even if I can't eat the eggs). They're just such pleasant and silly creatures (the hens, roosters are awful!). I must admit tho, the Eglu pic above made me laugh out loud! Smart, inventive, but all I could think when I saw it was, "Yeah, that'd be the home of yuppy chickens!!"

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Speaking of the economy and chickens... I couldn't stop myself from looking at the price of the Eglu that's pictured at the top. $995. Holds "up to" 10 chickens. Oh my, oh my. That is not the hobby farm I grew up on!!