Your Community Financial Statement Information Can Be Provided in Different Reporting Formats to Best Meet your Analytical Needs
Financial statements are a critical tool in a board's decision making process for a community. We provide standard financial information each month in a simple, concise and standard format. The standard financial statement package consists of six distinct sections. They are as follows:
1. Balance Sheet
2. Income Statement
3. Check Disbursement List
4. Accounts Payable List
5. Account Receivable List
6. Income and Expense Trend Report
This standard financial statement package provides you with all the necessary tools to make sound financial decisions for your community. We also offer the opportunity to receive these reports in a different reporting format. You may prefer to receive your financial reports in one of the different formats or add a report to the financial reports we currently provide. If this is something that you are interested in exploring, we are offering the opportunity to review the options by simply contacting the Imagineers general ledger accountant dedicated to serving your community. They will be happy to review your needs and the available reporting options.
To further highlight these report variations and the reason(s) you may consider adding an additional report, I have outlined specific examples below. Since monitoring income and expenses against the budget is usually the largest area of conern, let's focus on the income statement. The standard income statement that is included in your monthly financial statement shows actual, budget and variance for the current month and for the current year. This is followed by the annual budget and the budget remaining. Although this provides ample information to make sound decisions, there are choices that may further assist you in that process. They include the following variations:
* Income Statement Variance Report - If your community tends to minimize the impact of budget overruns, this reports should help. It can reveal for you how large an impact just a couple of small budget overruns can effect the overall budget. This particular report lists the current period actual and budget dollars in a column and also has a column for the dollar variance between the two. It also shows the percentage of variance between these two figures in a third column. The same information is then repeated showing the year-to-date summary figures.
* Summary Income Statement - This is a great report for larger communities who desire to summarize expense information at a less detailed level. In cases where there are a large number of line items, this report helps quickly see where your problem areas might be (from an expense viewpoint). This report shows income and expenses by category (instead of line item). As an example, this report summarizes all 'professional fees' instead of listing multiple line items for each professional fee such as 'attorney fee', 'management fees', 'accounting fees', etc. This report may be a good addition to the monthly financial statement package.
* Income Statement Prior Year Comparison Report - This report can be helpful in looking at the months where you typically spend a lot of money on projects. This usually tends to be in the May through September timeframe. For example, if your community is in the process of doing a multiple year deck or painting project, then comparing results year over year could be of value. This report shows actual dollars for this month and year and also for the same month last year as well as a variance of the two time periods. It shows the same information for year-to-date and then is followed by the annual budget and the budget remaining.
* Quarterly Income Statements - This report can be helpful if you have a project that is going to span a specific quarter of the year. You can look at that particular time-frame to see if you meet the budget goals. This can be provided as a detail or summary report for a quarter whether it is a calendar quarter or fiscal quarter. This report provides information for the current quarter by actual, budget, variance dollars and a total year-to-date figure. These figures include total actual dollars for all the motnhs of activity during the current fiscal year followed by the annual budget and remaining budget figures.
In addition to the above options, the income statement is also available showing rounded dollar figures and dollar variance figures. Keep in mind that you can choose to replace or add reports to your standard monthly reporting package. You can also request one of these reports at any time as the need arises. We would be more than happy to speak with you and determine just the right reports and structure which will best meet your community's needs.
Thank you for reading the Imagineers Board Newsletter. If you have any question or need any additional information on any articles provided in this newsletter, please contact us at 1-800-560-7268.
Imagineers LLCEmail: Gpassacantando@imagineersllc.com
Phone: 1-800-560-7268
Fax: 860-236-3951
Web: http://www.imagineersllc.com
