Update For Finance – Dec 2023
OIAA Finance Committee
Record of Minutes
Saturday, December 9, 2023
9:00am – 10:24am HDT
11:00am -12:24pm PDT
2:00pm – 5:24pm EDT
Attendees :
Jennifer – Acting Treasurer
Felix – Alternate Treasurer
Barry – Long time Member of Finance Committee
Susan – OIAA Chair
Erica K. – Finance Subcommittee Member
Nona – Serving Vice Chair
Nicky – Acting Finance Secretary
Terry – Convention Chair
Jennifer leads Serenity Prayer. All in Attendance join in.
Review of Agenda
Jennifer pulls up the agenda on her screen and asks if anyone has anything to add to it. Susan begins by saying that Mary had paid for a subscription to Deep L out of her own pocket. It would also be helpful for us in the future, so we should take that into consideration. Erica seconds that and states that she uses it every day. Nona adds that she also uses it. Barry also uses it and thinks it is now a standard language tool. Jennifer says that she has added it to the agenda.
APPROVAL OF AGENDA / DEEP L DISCUSSION ADDED
Review of Previous Months Meeting Minutes
Jennifer asks if everyone reviewed the Minutes as she just sent them. Susan says she has reviewed them.
Terry joins the meeting and introduces herself as the Convention Chair.
Jennifer asks Nicky to edit the document as they go through. Jennifer reads over the Minutes out loud and asks if there is anything to add to please just chime in.
They read the previous meeting minutes. Here are the areas of the Minutes and Previous Meeting that are discussed further:
Area of the Previous Meeting Revisited Additions and Reiterations
Donations and Creation of Letters above $250.00
Jennifer adds that she decided to double check on the information that there were several people that donated more than $250.00. She states that those transactions were not being properly designated to their groups. Since they had been miscategorized, there really isn’t any person that donates over $ 250.00. She thought something wasn’t right so she took the extra effort to check and she found out that there is less than 10 percent coming from individuals compared to their previous thought of 40 percent.
Slack Subscription Cancellation
Susan asks for clarification on who decided to cancel the subscription as the wording wasn’t clear. Jennifer responds that she questioned tech about it and it was then decided by the tech committee to cancel it. Susan helps with the wording of the sentence to apply that information.
OIAA Groups Missing Checks
Previously, there had been an AA group who were inquiring about payments, so Jennifer had stated they had not received the checks as of November 11th, 2023’ s meeting. But as of today’s meeting on December 9th, 2023, we now have received them. Susan adds that she remembers this issue and that it was Janine that needed to clarify this issue before she left her position as IGR rep. Jennifer replies that she sent out a letter asking the other groups to please review their contributions and make sure they are being received by the OIAA. Jennifer says this is why she created the contributions sheet, which is helpful.
Checks Sent to an Old Address
Barry had stated at the last meeting that there were checks sent to an old address that needed to be forwarded over. Jennifer asks Barry if they had indeed been sent out. Barry replies that they did.
Internal Audit Subcommittee
Jennifer says that she was informed by Leslie that she will have something to report in January so it will be on the January 2024 Agenda. Concerning Eldin, Jennifer informs all in the meeting that he has since backed out of the Audit Subcommittee and that Leslie and Erica are free to choose to add someone else to help the committee.
Paypal Giving Fund/Non Profit Status
Jennifer has spoken with PayPal and within 24 to 48 hours they should be receiving the reduced rate as a non-profit and will not have to be associated with the Giving Fund. Even though it has been a difficult struggle, it is now come to fruition.
After a full review of the Minutes of the previous meeting, Jennifer calls for any opposition to the acceptance of the Minutes. No Opposition Stated.
APPROVAL OF PRIOR MEETINGS MINUTES
Review of Financial Reports
Jennifer puts up the Budget Variance. Jennifer begins with November Revenue just being under $8,500.00. PayPal Fees are associated with the Revenues at $199.32. She states that hopefully soon their fees will be ⅔ of what they have been. Professional fees are the accounting system at $42.00. Our recurring 2025 International Convention accrual is $145.83. Translation/ASL Services of $187.40 is a residual from October and one for Upwork for Unity. Other Technologies are all of the Google expenses that we incur of $484.71. Video Conferencing is $50.00 a month for a larger room and the Website Hosting/ Management is the fee we pay to Melinda for Tech Support. Lastly, we have .05 cents in interest. Net Income is $3,946.86. Jennifer asks if there are any questions about the Budget Variance.
Barry asks to go back and would like to know what we budgeted for the Conference. Jennifer clarifies that the $7500.00 is not for international convention but for Conference Expenses. Barry asks if anything is being accrued for conference expenses. Jennifer explains that the Conference Expenses are for conferences that have been completed. They had budgeted for $7,500, but their actual expenses were only $6,460. Barry understands where these numbers are coming from. Felix would like to know why there is a difference of $750 for web hosting and thinks it’s a large amount. Jennifer explains she receives an invoice every two weeks of $1140. In November, there were three invoices. The $10,000 over budget, or approximately $10,800 going into 2023 that was earmarked for Tech. She explains that it was more of a Balance Sheet item than wasn’t on the Budget but more of money that was set aside just for Tech to use. Felix clarifies by stating that it was more of a timing issue than affecting cash flow. Jennifer agrees. Jennifer asks for any more questions that she can address.
NO QUESTIONS OR FEEDBACK
Review of the Balance Sheet
Jennifer reads the Balance Sheet as having a little over $100,000 in the bank. $5,300 is earmarked for the 2025 International Conference, so there is just under $95,000.00 that is not earmarked.
Susan would like to go back to the Budget Variance and states there was a certain email chain that we might see on her Agenda for tomorrow. Susan states that she got an email from a person who was looking to see the Budget vs Actuals and so Susan sent her a link to the reports. Susan wants to explain that she saw the woman from the email in person, and she stated to her that last year’s expenses are in no way the same as this year and this year we will be spending a significant amount more. Jennifer calls for opposition to the Balance Sheet. Erica says she doesn’t have an opposition but rather a request to compare a couple of things in the Budget.
NO QUESTIONS OR FEEDBACK
Review of the Contributions Sheet
Jennifer brings up the list of Contributions on the screen. Jennifer says that she has encouraged the groups to go over this list to make sure the numbers are the same as what is being recorded. Jennifer goes down the list and wanted to point out a group called Virtual Sober Start. She says that this is the group that was having troubles sending 8 checks to the OIAA that we received this month. Jennifer states that there are 84 contributing groups and individuals.
Jennifer decides to bring up a PayPal report to show the Finance Committee. Jennifer shares her screen. She explains how PayPal generates these reports for them. She brings up Sales Insights for November and shows how the report shows that there is an increase of 108% in dollars, that there was a 49% increase in the number of transactions, and that the amount in contributions increased 39% from a year ago. The graph shows the month of November and the yellow line is the prior year and the blue is the current year. Jennifer says that the information provided shows that the OIAA continues to grow. 95% of the contributions come from the US and 5% from other countries. The report shows which countries contributed. Jennifer believes that this really shows the information of who is contributing and puts it in a nice report. Jennifer shows that there was a 55% increase in new customers up from last year. So, out of these 76 people that have never contributed used to be 24 out of the 76. She says this shows that they are continuing to grow and continuing to attract new groups to OIAA. Jennifer asks if anyone has any questions or feedback on this. She positively says that this report shows OIAA in a positive growing state.
No Feedback or Questions
Jennifer wants to speak to something she brought up earlier when going over the previous minutes. She brings up the PayPal processing fees being changed to nonprofit fees to take effect in 24 to 48 hours. She will be able to tell once a transaction goes through whether or not the fees have been deducted. She will contact PayPal if there are any issues with those deductions. The fees right now are 2.89% and will lower to 1.99% after the change. The .49 cents per transaction is just standard across both fee structures. Jennifer asks for any questions about this topic. No replies.
NO QUESTIONS OR FEEDBACK
Review of Deep L
Jennifer asks for Susan to speak about Deep L as she has no idea what it is. Susan starts by saying that it is a translating program. What she does know about it is that the only other alternative to use is Google Translate. Beth and Carlos from Unity both use this program and brought it to her attention. She also knows that Mary is paying for a professional subscription to use in the registrar’s office. She believes it is about $10/month. Susan brings up that she has a 22 page document she needs to translate, but they should seriously look into getting a subscription of Deep L for OIAA. Nona says there is some particular licensing for Deep L, where it’s a professional business license, otherwise it’s charged by the individual user. She sends over a link to both Jennifer and Susan. Nona personally uses Deep L. She says that it only allows 500 characters under the free version. Nona continues that we would use it as we get many responses in various languages., particularly in the IGR forum. She recommends doing it with multiple users. She believes they should use this program and register as a business so that they can have multiple users. She says there is a form to fill out asking for information on the number of users. She believes it is far better and won’t lose as much in the translation as Google Translate does. She finalizes by saying she thinks we’d have to go with the business license because to have the highest level of individual users is $56 a month. Barry would like to add that this is for professional use. He says it is used to communicate commercially, so, that’s different from Dual Translator. He highly recommends we look into it and have 2 or 3 year subscription. Barry believes that if we have the money, we should be using the best tools we have for communication. Nona, Susan and Jennifer discuss the account details. They also discuss not having to send a document to Communications without knowing what message it was saying. With multiple users, whoever received the response/need document would then not know what information it had contained though it was addressed to them. Nona thinks we should subscribe to the business account and will allow you to put how many users you would have. It could bring down the extra expense of translators’ work as they charge by the page. They agree that there is an extra layer of time that will be eliminated with the use of this program. It could also protect some confidentiality in the system of Alcoholics Anonymous.
Erica would like to bring up some concerns of hers. Regarding the name of the audit, Erica requests that the language be modified from Internal Financial Audit to Internal Financial Review. She believes that it implies that they are professional Auditors, which they are not. However, under a Financial Review, the rules are the same as an audit, and she would also like to prepare a checklist of all items to be reviewed and present it to the Board for approval before they begin. Jennifer agrees and begins by saying that when addressing the Internal Audit, it shall now be referred to as the Internal Financial Review. Erica says that she and Leslie are planning on getting together before the January Meeting so they could have some sort of game plan. Jennifer replies that she will put the Financial Review Subcommittee on the agenda for January’s meeting. However, if they feel they need more time, please let her know about a week before and she will leave them out of it and set up another time.
Jennifer asks for any other business to be addressed? No replies.
Jennifer enters a motion to close the meeting. Terry makes a motion. Susan Seconds it. Jennifer calls for any Opposition? No answers.
NO QUESTIONS OR FEEDBACK
Jennifer Closes with Responsibility Statement.
