Pre-school committees, is the job of Treasurer your hot potato?

[Ripeberry]

Hi, after asking parents to come forward since October to be on the committee and NO-ONE turning up.
We have finally had to ask our Treasurer to stay on and be paid for her work.
We advised the parents that it would be up to an xtra £1.50 a day.
We have had the figures in and it comes out at much less 60p extra a day.
Today at pick-up time the parents were told and one just went ballistic, saying that there was no way she could afford that....yak...yak...yak.
Which makes me laugh because she smokes like a chimmeney and is pregnant.
Maybe one pack of ciggs less a day would make it affordable.
Anyway, back to my main point.
No-one wanted to do the job of Treasurer as we are not bookeepers and there are far too many legal implecations in taking it on.
Do you have qualified bookeepers? or do you just let an inexperienced parent look after your money?
AB

[Clayhead]

Don't deal with this anymore but when I did, we couldn't get anyone to do it and used a local bookkeeper instead. This ended up being far better as we were able to have a professional relationship with them (rather than badgering another poor parent to do stuff in the evening) and could contact them during the working day.

They also ran the payroll.

HTH

[Fimbo]

I came off my pre-school committee in September, I was Staffing Officer which was a bad enough job!!

Anyway we were lucky that our Treasurer was a parent who is a qualified accountant. She also decided to stay on as she has a younger child.

[Birdly]

I'm our pre-school treasurer. I'm theoretically responsible for the finances, but the day-to-day handling of cash and cheques is dealt with by a paid administrator. She writes all the cheques (including sorting out staff wages), which 2 committee members (parents) then have to sign, and she also deals with fees cheques from parents. We liaise regularly to keep each other up to speed on upcoming expenditure and current bank balances. I'm the main decision maker when it comes to deciding whether to spend or not, but everything goes through the whole committee.

I don't have any financial qualifications, although I ran biggish budgets at work in my pre-children days.

It is a big responsibility, but if people don't take on these roles then some pre-schools/playgroups etc will be forced to close. My children love going to pre-school, and I like to take an interest and be involved in what they do, and this is my way of showing support.

Not everyone feels the same though - some parents contribute nothing to our fundraising activities (I don't just mean money, I mean time as well), and it can be pretty hard to swallow when you've been working really hard in your own time to raise extra cash for new toys and equipment, but that's just the way it is, unfortunately.

Won't be doing it again once my year is up though!!

[Orinoco]

Message withdrawn

[Eddas]

we struggled to find any committee members at all when we had the AGM in Oct. If it wasn't for me and my friend who signed up it would be a nightmare!

I am currently only a member, no offical job, BUT I am pretty certain that come the nest AGM I will be getting the treasurers job as no-one else will want it and I am an accountant I was dreading the committee finding out I don't mind though, will hopefully be quicker for me to do it than someone else who doesn't have a clue about bookkeeping/budgeting etc

[Ubergeekian]

Orinoco: "You're not a charity are you? IIRC, there's something that says the trustees of a charity can't receive payment for the work that they do..."

It is OK in some circumstances. Generally, for professional services, it needs to be written into the governing document and may need charity commission approval.

There's lots of good stuff about this on the CC website: see here, for example.