Hello Treasurer!

Congratulations on being elected! This guide (written circa 2015) is here to help you keep track of your Treasurerly duties and provide instruction on bookkeeping. 
The Basics:
* We have 3 different cash storage boxes in Unigames: the yellow coins box (also home to $5 notes) the wall-mounted notes box, and the black lock box. The black lock box is kept in the cupboard, and can only be accessed by the Treasurer, President, and Vice-President. We have a set of keys for the two locked boxes that the Treasurer can keep on them, and a small coded safe with spares that the President and VP can open if they need access. Your predecessor should give you these keys and tell you the code. 
* Since 2013, we’ve kept a petty cash supply of $150 in the black lock box. The idea of this is to allow the President and Vice-President to buy small necessities for the club without interrupting the Treasurer’s carefully designed system, as they are often wont to do. The President and VP should be free to take money from the petty cash without necessarily notifying you, and replace it with the change and a receipt when they are done. Replenish the petty cash back up to $150 each week from the Guild account, if it needs it.  
Treasurerly Duties:
From the Constitution:
9.3 	The Treasurer shall have the following duties, in addition to those elsewhere in the Constitution and in any Regulations:
1.  To keep proper books of account dealing with the property and finances of Unigames and to furnish the Committee with such information upon request.
2.  To arrange and be responsible for the handling of the petty cash.
3.  To prepare a financial statement detailing income and expenses during their term of office, for presentation at the Annual General Meeting.
4.  To produce and deliver all necessary books, vouchers and other documents to the persons appointed by the Guild for the purpose of conducting and audit, insofar as such persons require.
5.  To produce and deliver all necessary books, receipts and other documents to the persons appointed by the Guild for the purpose of obtaining grants, insofar as such persons require.
As Treasurer, you have four tasks that have to be performed weekly. These are:
1. Food runs
* These usually have to be performed weekly, at either Claremont Quarter Coles or Subiaco Woolworths. If you haven’t been around long enough to know what the status quo for Unigames consumables is, check out the price list for a guide of what to get and what prices to pay. Generally you shouldn’t have to pay more than the Unigames price, and should usually be able to get the goods at a decent discount. For example, we sell ice-creams for $2 each and will usually buy whichever kind is on sale (often Connoisseur or Magnums) for $6 for a pack of 4. It can be worth buying things in bulk if they are cheap enough: for example, I once bought about 50 packets of Doritos (still in the boxes) because they were on sale for about $1.50 each. 
If you want to be super-efficient, you can check out the shops’ online catalogues and see which one has the best deals in any given week. Coles is usually a pretty safe bet.
* Expect to spend $300-$500 on your average food run. How you deal with this money is up to you, but here are the tried and tested methods:
i. Pay from your own pocket, and reimburse yourself from the Guild Finance account (Note: you may need to get two other exec to sign for this, depending on who is manning Guild Finance that day)
ii. Keep a “fridge fund” in the black lock box (of about $500), that you take with you on a food run and use to pay. Reimburse this from the Guild Finance account after every food run. 
iii. Take cash straight from the clubroom. 
Of these methods, I would recommend either the first or the second. Personally I preferred the second so that I didn’t have to  sometimes be down $500 for an unspecified period of time. If you don’t mind this then the first method may be more convenient (not having to stop by the room before the food run, not having to carry $500 cash with you). These two methods are vastly preferable to the third because they provide a neat record of where money has gone – we switched to these methods after years of doing the third because we had a period of losing money and having no idea where it was going. 
* Part of keeping the room stocked is keeping the stationary stocked. Keep an eye on how many pens, pacers etc. we have, as well as plates, cups, forks, bin bags (go for the biggest you can find), tissues, paper towel and spray cleaner. 
2. Deposits of excess cash from the clubroom/ culling the float
* This often has to be done multiple times a week. You need to count the money from the float (yellow box and wall mounted box), put a bunch of it into clear bank bags (which can be gotten from Guild Finance), and deposit those bags with the Guild. Doing this requires filling out a page in the deposit book and taking it, along with the cash, to Guild Finance. I usually leave about $50 worth of coins and four/five $5 notes in the yellow box and five $10 notes in the wall box. It’s up to you whether you make a deposit every time you cull the float or store the excess in the black lock box and do it all in one go before the weekly committee meeting. 
3. Withdrawal of funds from the Guild Finance account for reimbursement (for food runs, book buys, etc.)
* This requires filling out a page in the withdrawals book and taking it to Guild Finance. You’ll need two executive signatures for each withdrawal of which you can be one unless the withdrawal is to reimburse yourself. Try to keep all the receipts in a plastic folder.  
* I would recommend reimbursing people from the account rather than cash in the room because it provides a better record of cash flows. 
4. Collection of a bank statement from Guild Finance and reporting the state of the treasury at committee meetings (including OGMs and the AGM)
* The collection of a bank statement itself is very simple – just ask for one. Preparation for a meeting should be a lot more involved. I liked to keep an accounts book (with ruled columns etc.) to record all transactions that the club was involved with that week, and calculate the expected Guild account balance. This is very important to do, as Guild Finance is not infallible and has in the past made mistakes that have caused a lot of stress to committee when they weren't picked up (See: accidentally deducting $735 from our account in mid-2013). By doing this, you can compare your own total with the bank statement and work through any discrepancies. If it’s a small amount, there may have been a Uniprint charge made directly to the account. Check every entry since your last ‘audit’ and make sure that they coincide with your records. If you can’t figure something out or it doesn’t seem right, run down and check it with Guild Finance. 
In addition to account activity, I liked to keep track of our cash and pending transactions, as this gives a better idea of the overall wealth of the club. For example, if in a committee meeting we decide to spend $250 on a book buy, I will record this in the book and adjust it/move it as the Librarian completes the purchases.
I have transcribed the accounts book into excel as a record and reference – the file should be in the same archive as this document. 

You also have certain sporadic tasks:
1. Attendance of the Guild Treasurer Training (there is a 40% penalty to all Guild grants if this is not attended) at the start of the year.
2. Applications for grants:
* Semester Grants: require the scanning of receipts and subsequent aggregation of all expenditures made by the club that semester, up to a limit of $2000 (although this may change year to year). Unigames should be hitting this limit every semester. Use receipts from food runs, camp spending (booking, food, etc.), prizes etc. Expenditures from non-Guild approved events cannot be used! The payout from these (when you hit the maximum) is usually $700-$800. 
* O-Day Grants: requires a list of the student numbers of signed-up Freshers that are members of the Guild. The previous secretary should have compiled these sign-ups into a handy excel document, but beware this is due very early in your term. 
* Grant application forms can be found on the Guild Club Dashboard: https://clubs.guild.uwa.edu.au/club/forms/dashboard/club_index/84


Good luck with your term, and have fun! Please feel free to add to/ amend this document as you gain experience, that each subsequent Treasurer may become wiser and more powerful than the sum of her predecessors. 

All the best,
Gabby McGrath, Treasurer 2014.