I am sitting at the kitchen table in a state of amazement bordering on shock, as suddenly my divisional beekeeping accounts for 2014 came out. Like a Sudoku that seems insoluble until you realise that there is only one square in the third column that could be a 2, and after that the rest of it falls steadily into your hands, after a couple of hours of confusing myself trying to disentangle the various elements of the column headed Subs, and much head scratching about the layout of the assets and liabilities, which at first sight seemed impenetrable even though I know I wrote up last year's balance sheet and the one before that, the accounts suddenly fell into place. Instead of an apparent seven hundred and something pounds discrepancy between the income as calculated according to the annual accounts recommended format, and the income as per my monthly check of the bank statements, suddenly it was down to seven pounds, which I could pin down to a five pound error in subscriptions, and a stray two pounds to do with disease insurance. It helped once I'd deleted the six hundred and something pounds expenditure on equipment that I'd copied into the income column as well.
In an ideal world there would not be any subscription errors, but in the real world there are a hundred and something people each putting their own unique and idiosyncratic spin on filling in a form, there are single and dual members, there is bee disease insurance for up to three hives included as standard within the basic subscription with the option to top it up. You can choose to make a donation to bee disease research, beekeeping education or divisional funds. People fail to add up their forms correctly or decide after they've paid that they want to increase the number of hives insured, so that my spreadsheet is soon populated with odd fifty pence and two pound payments and underpayments. Memberships are due to be renewed on the first of January, and by the end of February the main flurry of subscriptions is over, giving me ten months to forget how the spreadsheet was laid out before it's time to sit down and pull it all together for the annual accounts.
Subs, it turned out, encompassed everything included in the basic subscription, that is capitation payments to the county and national associations, and the basic disease insurance for up to three hives, plus the divisional subscription, and I'd already split out the donations into their separate categories. The mixture of single and dual subscriptions means that you can't just go X number of members by Y fee per category and get to the right answer. The rule on how much insurance dual members get was changed in 2014, which added to the confusion, and in a few cases members renewed by direct bank credit and I never got a copy of their membership forms. In the circumstances I decided it was OK to invoke the accounting concept of materiality to deal with the odd seven pounds, and lumped it in with divisional subscriptions.
We work to a tight deadline. The AGM is held less than a month after the financial year end, whereas the music society takes six months over it, and I need to get the books scrutinised before then. My volunteer auditor is all lined up, though she has very unluckily broken her leg, but says her brain is still working, which is a relief for her and for me as it saves me having to find an alternative willing to work to a demanding timetable at short notice. Based on previous years' experience the chairman will ask me to keep my remarks extremely brief. Also based on past experience, most people don't like asking questions about numbers in public, so with any luck the odd seven pounds, and indeed the whole basis of the split between different categories of membership income will pass without comment.
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