Cyberspace Communications finances for August, 1999

Sep 7 22:04 UTC 1999

Here is the treasurer's report on Cyberspace Communications, Inc. finances
through August 31st, 1999.

Beginning Balance     $5,577.42

Credits                 $234.00         Member contributions
                          $4.00         Miscellaneous donations
                   ------------
                        $238.00

Debits                   $66.15         Pumpkin Rent for September
                         $54.34         Electricity for August
                        $350.69         Phone Bill (see below)
                   ------------
                        $471.18

Ending Balance        $5,344.24

Our current balance breaks down as follows:

$5,168.88               General Fund
  $115.36               Silly Hat Fund
   $60.00               Spare Parts Fund

There was no activity in the Grex Store this month, so the balances remain at:

                         Cash                                    Stock
                     ---------                                ---------
                      ($46.60)                                 $301.60

We had two new members in August (mlf and lldpdx).  We are currently at 93 
members, 83 of whom are paid through at least September 15th.  (The others 
expired recently and are in a grace period.)

Notes:

- Well, we finally broke our streak of months in the black, at 8.  It had to 
happen sometime.

- Thanks to janc for being the stand-in treasurer for most of August, while I 
was away on vacation.

- The $4 miscellaneous contribution will be adjusted in the future.  satindra 
sent us a check for 10 Canadian dollars to pay for his membership (as he has 
the last two months).  The first month I didn't notice the check was Canadian, 
and deposited it as if it were U.S. dollars, and the bank has yet to complain. 
 Last month I took it to the main Great Lakes Bank downtown, and they wrote the
 U.S. dollar amount on the check (based on that day's conversion factor) and 
that's what I recorded and reported.  This month I took the check to the 
smaller Great Lakes branch inside Kroger's on Maple Road, and the people there 
were clueless and powerless to tell me what the conversion would be.  They 
said they'd just send it over to the main bank (as they do with all deposits, 
I gathered) where "they're supposed to catch the Canadian checks".  So I 
assume they'll let us know on our bank statement what the deal is. 

Thanks to everyone who contributed in August:

bmoran, bruin, carson, coyote, eeyore, lldpdx, mlf, quail, robh, sagan, 
satindra, scg, and scott.

Thanks everyone!

If you or your institution would like to become a member of Grex, it only
costs $6/month or $60/year.  Send money to:

Cyberspace Communications
P. O. Box 4432
Ann Arbor, MI 48106-4432

If you pay by cash or money order, please include a photocopy of some form of 
ID.  I can't add you to the rolls without ID.  (If you pay with a personal 
check that has your name pre-printed on it, we consider that a good enough 
ID.)  Type !support or see http://www.cyberspace.org/member.html for more 
info.

response 2 of 30:

Sep 8 02:47 UTC 1999

The Silly Hat Fund was started a couple of years ago when Peter Riley 
(nestene) handed me some money and said "this is for the Silly Hat Fund". 
That's all it takes to start a fund here on Grex.  In the time since then,
a number of people have contributed to the fund.  We haven't figured out a
good use for it yet, though buying T-Shirts for the ACLU lawyers is the best
use I've heard suggested yet.  In any case, I hope we use it for something
non-essential and preferably frivolous.

I don't know what you mean about an extra $200.  We came up short this month,
but over the long haul Grex's operating expense budget is doing fine.

response 4 of 30:

Sep 8 20:39 UTC 1999

Oh, sorry, the "see below" was a cut-and-paste artifact from last month.  $350
is the normal size of our phone bill.  (I'll break it down for you if you
like.)

response 6 of 30:

Sep 9 03:06 UTC 1999

I think you haven't been following long enough, Don.  All of the
treasurer's reports for the past 6 years are in ~aruba/reports, if you'd
like to look them over. 

However, it's probably time to rev up the auction again.

response 8 of 30:

Sep 9 20:14 UTC 1999

   Don, if you take a look at Grex's finances over a period of time,
you'll see that there are peaks and valleys in our monthly income.
Given that we had eight straight months of positive income, I'm not
too worried about this--we've seen this before.  As always however,
it bears watching.  Thats always been the case.

response 10 of 30:

Sep 11 23:11 UTC 1999

Check those numbers again, Don - May was the only month of the 8 (12/98
through 7/99) which was a gain for us only because of the refund.  Even
without it, we would have been down only $84.20 in May.

Balance on  7/31/99:    $5,577.42
Balance on 11/30/98:    $3,282.65
                        ---------
Increase:               $2,294.77
Ameritech refund:         $970.27
                        ---------
Increase w/o refund:    $1,324.50

It was quite a run.

I plan on doing a full-blown financial report (like the one I did at this time
last year) for the next board meeting.  Hopefully we can get it online this
year.  We can credit some of our prosperity over the period to the decision
to drop two dial-in lines and the ICNET connection - that saved us
approximately 4 lines x $20 per line per month x 8 months = $640.

response 12 of 30:

Sep 13 01:50 UTC 1999

Coast to Coast should be able to help with that.  www.coast.net.

response 14 of 30:

Sep 13 04:08 UTC 1999

Keep in mind those are per-line.

response 16 of 30:

Sep 13 17:43 UTC 1999

why do telcos charge for not having long distance?

response 18 of 30:

Sep 13 18:27 UTC 1999

You've got me why they charge us for not having a long-distance carrier
selected.  It probably has to do with keeping people from avoiding certain
fees. 

I've been working on my super-duper treasurer's report for the board
meeting, and I found a couple of non-critical errors in recent treasurer's
reports. 

1. In February I reported that $16.50 was contributed to the Silly Hat
Fund, but I mistakenly added that money into the general fund instead. 
That error has carried through to the current report - I'll fix it next
month.

2. In July I miss-added the debits list and reported a total of $176.07
when it should have been $216.07.  The balnces and the rest of the report
are correct.  (This however means that I was wrong when I told Don that
May was the only month from Dec-July in which we were in the black only by
virtue of the tax credit.  In July we would have been in the red by $27.77
if it hadn't been for the refund.  So in fact two of the 8 months of
black were caused by the refund.) 

response 20 of 30:

Sep 13 22:11 UTC 1999

Don't they have another charge if you *are* set up with a long-distance
carrier?

response 22 of 30:

Sep 20 00:33 UTC 1999

re 18, even though your point still stands, it is nice to know that I was
twice as right.

Okay, my mind is still on weighing arguments at the debate tourney, so just
ignore me...

response 24 of 30:

Sep 20 17:06 UTC 1999

No, Grex is not paying not to be listed in the phone book.  What's your 
carrier, Sindi?