September Report and something new

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Sudane Erato
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September Report and something new

Post by Sudane Erato »

I am happy to say that the September Financial Report for the community is now posted.

https://cdsdemocracy.org/cds-treasurer/reports/

ALONG WITH the August Financial Report. It was pointed out that I had overlooked the August Report, and after overcoming my mortification, I recovered sufficiently to prepare and post both reports!

Now at the same time, our esteemed LRA Gaius Tiberius Curio made the wonderful suggestion that I might include, along with the traditional numbers, a Land Use Summary similar to what Widget had been making for some time, showing how much of our available land was occupied and generating income. Since moving to the Casper tier box system, we now have fairly easy access to this information, and since I found his suggestion most intriguing, I promised to look into it.

The September 2017 Financial Report contains the first such Land Use Summary. I ask... indeed, beg... you to have a look at it and offer any comments for improvement which might come to you. The Land Use Summary appears on the 4th page (including the Cover) of the September 2017 Report found at the above URL.

Perhaps even more explanation will be needed of that report, and I offer some of that here. This Report displays a summary of *OCCUPIED* parcels, so indicated because they have an owner who has paid into them. Because they have an owner, we know that at some time... and that is important... at some time payment was (or will be) made into the box to cover the moment of occupancy at which the report is made. The date of the report is shown on the left.

But that does NOT Mean that that payment for this day in time was made this month! The "Income/Expense" report shows how much money was taken in JUST this month, so that number can be and almost always WILL be completely different than the number shown in the Land Summary report. In essence... if nobody ever moved into or out of the CDS, and if everyone kept their tier more or less current, then over the course of a year or so the "Tier Collected" shown in the Land Summary Report would be the same as the "Tier Revenues" shown on the Income Report.

This concept may be difficult to understand, and I welcome proposals for expressing it more simply. But I have felt for a long time that citizens must learn to pay attention less to the actual amount of tier collected each month, and more to the occupancy (assuming a moderately low rate of tier in arrears).

And a note too about that last topic, tier in arrears. On the face of it, it sounds like arrears is a nasty word, expressing the fact of money being lost to the community treasury. And sometimes it is. But much more often, that arrears gets paid up. The tier boxes in the CDS are set to, technically, allow arrears for up to 90 days before the owner is ejected. This means that anytime before 90 days (or earlier if the owner is ejected by an EM) that owner can return, pay up the box, and pay for the late amounts due. This happens automatically.

Obviously tier in arrears is a pain for the EMs, because they often have to track down the offender. But from a $$ point of view, nothing is lost. So I have added on the summary the column to show sums in arrears... which is a very small proportion of the total paying tier boxes, so that the report reader can have some sense of the scale of the arrears situation.

Your comments are enthusiastically welcomed.

Sudane..................

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Bagheera
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Re: September Report and something new

Post by Bagheera »

Hi Sudane -

I like what you did with the tier collection report ! Makes perfect sense to me *smiles*

On a different note, I think the decimals are out of place in the 2 lines of US$ amounts under assets
(i.e. $246,399 and -$256,571;
I am guessing they should be $24,640 and $25,657 ... ?)

or am I not reading it correctly?

Thanks again !

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Sudane Erato
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Re: September Report and something new

Post by Sudane Erato »

Bagheera wrote: Fri Oct 27, 2017 1:25 pm

On a different note, I think the decimals are out of place in the 2 lines of US$ amounts under assets
(i.e. $246,399 and -$256,571;
I am guessing they should be $24,640 and $25,657 ... ?)

or am I not reading it correctly?

Oh! No... the numbers there are correct. But you're surely right in that it can be misleading.

For any financial statement to be "mathematically" correct, it has to, shall we say... add up. And as the old saying goes, you can't add apples and oranges. Well, despite our very simple financial system, we have the complexifying curse of being dual currency. Therefore, in order to present a coherent financial statement, we must choose either one currency or the other to display the numbers. In our case, for some important philosophical reasons, we have always presented the numbers in L$s. So, in a nutshell, the numbers you point to are the US$ accounts translated into L$s. You can get a quick reading of the actual US$ value in those accounts by dividing those numbers by the number at the top of the report... what the app calls the "Revalue Rate", in this case 246.

It would certainly make a lot of sense, given my explanation, to include in parenthesis the US$ number, for the convenience of the reader. I guess I could, by exporting this report and re-configuring it to include those... not just for the US$ accounts for for all the accounts. But this report, and the Income/Expense Report on the next page, are preset reports generated by the bookkeeping app I use, so over the years I've just published them straight out of the app.

I hope that explains things. Please do continue the query if its still unclear.

Sudane......................

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