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Reading your own statements

What the position and the operations are telling a board, line by line.

Two views

The statements page shows two views of the same books. The position is a photo at one date: what the society owns, what it owes and what is left.

The operations are the film of a stretch: what was received, what was paid out and the excess. Pick the stretch at the top, and both views follow it.

Owns and owes

What the society owns is its cash, its gear and money owed to it. What it owes is its bills, its loans and tax it holds for the government.

What is left is the two apart, with the excess to date inside it. The page checks its own sums and says so: what the society owns must equal what it owes plus what is left.

Received and paid

Revenue is what the society earned or was given in the stretch. Expenses are what it spent. The excess is the two apart. A plus excess adds to what is left. A minus one takes from it.

Tax the society holds for the government is never revenue, and it never shows in this view.

The funds

The position lists each fund, with its balance at the date and how much of that sum is spoken for. Spoken-for money is grant money held for the work it was given for.

It is not the society’s to spend on other things, however healthy the total looks. The spoken-for part stands in what the society owes. The rest is the society’s own, in what is left.

By fund

The last table cuts the stretch by fund. Each fund shows its own revenue, its own expenses and its own excess. A board can see a grant year apart from the day to day money.

The full story of a fund, with what is still held, stands on the Funds page.