Grex Coop11 Conference Item 166

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Cyberspace Communications Finances for March, 2000

Apr 1 05:22 UTC 2000

Here is the treasurer's report on Cyberspace Communications, Inc. finances
through March 31, 2000:

Beginning Balance     $5,416.15

Credits                 $546.00         Member contributions
                        $165.40         Miscellaneous donations
                        $ 81.00         Auction proceeds
                   ------------
                        $792.40

Debits                   $66.15         Pumpkin Rent for April
                         $54.34         Electricity for March
                        $345.18         Phone Bill
                         $35.00         Renewal of grex.org
                         $35.00         Credit card fees (February)
                   ------------
                        $535.67

Ending Balance        $5,672.88

Our current balance breaks down as follows:

$5,479.02               General Fund
  $133.86               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 no new member and no returning members  in January.  
We are currently at 96 members, 85 of whom are paid through at least 
April 15th.  (The rest expired recently and are in a grace period.)

Notes:

 - The renewal of grex.org happened in February, but it slipped my 
   attention for last month's treasurer's report.  Oops.  

 - Credit cards are more or less here!  We've gone through the 
   process to test it, and are only waiting to see if we actually got 
   the money.  I expect we'll be a fully armed and operational battlestation
   within the next week.  See coop item 165 for details.

Thanks to everyone who contributed in February:
arthurp, eeyore, srw, snow, i, n8rxs, dpfitzen, prp, cwalker,
bruin, dpc, jerryr, satindra, carl, brown, coyote, quail and janc

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.

15 responses total.

hhsrat

response 1 of 15:

Apr 1 19:13 UTC 2000

Why are we getting billed for credit card service in February when we 
didn't get the stuff needed until the end of march?

aruba

response 2 of 15:

Apr 2 03:38 UTC 2000

Thanks Greg.  #0 says we had no new members in January; do you mean March?
Any comment on the large amount of miscellaneous donations?

flem

response 3 of 15:

Apr 2 19:04 UTC 2000

The misc. donations came from several people.  One of them asked me 
not to state the amount of the donation publicly, so I can't think
of anything else I can safely say about it.  

We paid credit card fees in February because our Merchant account was
opened in February.  I believe it was actually working in early February,
but I didn't find out about it until late February.  At that time, I
couldn't get the Merchant number (the account number for the Merchant
account) because they had mailed it (to Mark, as it later turned out) 
and wouldn't give it to me over the phone.  I got the merchant number from
Mark at the March board meeting.  At that time, I could in theory have
processed credit card transactions, except that I had no way of telling
CardService (the people who we have a Merchant account with) that a
transaction had occurred.  The server was ready, but the client was not.  
  The "client" part of the picture is Charge Solutions (which I frequently
confuse with CardService unless I'm careful).  They run the secure server
that you actually enter your credit card number into, and where I go to
actually make the transaction happen.  They contacted me about a week after
the board meeting to say that our account with them was ready to go, and
our web designers could start making the webpage.  Jan did that, tested
things out, and all seems to be working now. 

Boy, I got carried away, didn't I...  :)

dpc

response 4 of 15:

Apr 2 19:12 UTC 2000

Also, there is a "thanks to everyone who contributed in February"
which should probably refer to March.  The problems one can get
into when using a "form" report.   8-)

flem

response 5 of 15:

Apr 2 19:56 UTC 2000

Oops.  :)

hhsrat

response 6 of 15:

Apr 3 01:12 UTC 2000

ok, I understand.  Thanks for the clarification.

devnull

response 7 of 15:

Apr 6 03:06 UTC 2000

At some point it should be possible to renew domain names through someone
who is cheaper than Network Solutions.  On the other hand, $35/yr/domain
isn't a significant fraction of the budget, and so I'm not overly anxious
to recommend that grex transfer the domain names we all care about to a
new registrar if we don't have experience with other registrars that suggests
that such transfers work reliably.

(joker.com appears to be about $12/domain/yr.  There may well be others
that are as cheap.  But I have no idea whether transfering domains to them
works or not.)

scg

response 8 of 15:

Apr 6 03:08 UTC 2000

I have yet to see anything that's impressed me from any of the new registrars.
Then again, it took a few years after the theoretical end of the Ameritech
monopoly for the CLECs to figure out what they were doing.  A competent domain
registrar may yet show up.

jp2

response 9 of 15:

Apr 6 18:40 UTC 2000

This response has been erased.

devnull

response 10 of 15:

Apr 9 23:10 UTC 2000

I have used joker.com, and they seem to be reasonably competent, and much
cheaper (~$12/mo, but they charge you in european currency, so you risk
getting screwed by exchange rate fluctations).

But it took several months after the competition started happening before
I became willing to use something other than NSI.

flem

response 11 of 15:

May 1 22:28 UTC 2000

I've been thinking about this for a month or two now, and I've come to the
conclusion that my treasurer's reports would be more relevant and easier to
do if, instead of entering them on the first of the month, I wait for the bank
statement to get here, which usually happens within the first week of the
month.  This is especially the case now that we can (and are!) accepting
credit cards; the credit card statement comes about the same time as the bank
statement.  
  So, this is why there is no report posted yet.  I will get the statements
and post the report on, I think, the 10th, before the board meeting, unless
people have strong objections.

aruba

response 12 of 15:

May 1 22:40 UTC 2000

I think that's a good idea.  I used to do that when we had service charges
on our bank account statement.  If you want to stay consistent with the way
Dan and I did it, though, the period covered by the report should still be
from the first of the month to the end of it.  So, for instance, checks
received between after the end of April but before the April report is
posted go on the May report, not the April one.

davel

response 13 of 15:

May 2 00:56 UTC 2000

I presume that's the period which would be covered by the statements he's
waiting for.

Sounds to me like an idea whose time has come, Greg.

hhsrat

response 14 of 15:

May 2 01:12 UTC 2000

Would it be possible to e-mail me the phone #/name/web address if we 
have one of the Credit Card companies we are using?  $35.00/month seems 
to be more affordable than some of the others I've seen.

dpc

response 15 of 15:

May 2 19:53 UTC 2000

I also think this is a good idea.  It's what I do with M-Net financial
reports.
Great minds run in the same channel...8-)

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