TREASURER’S REPORT 2008
Just as the Hardy Orchid Society has gone from strength to strength this year, so have its finances. The accounts show a overall surplus of income over expenditure of over twelve hundred pounds for the year.
Let me first deal with the unusual expenditure that we have incurred. This last year we have spent a total of about £4,300 on equipment in the form a photographic slide projector and a digital projector, both top of the range products. Up till now, the Society has had to rely on the projection equipment resident at the meeting venues or lent by its members. The equipment at some of the venues has been less than ideal and this year the Committee’s deliberations about buying our own have come to fruition. The slide projector saw service at the Wisley meeting and the Digital projector is having its first outing at this meeting. The cost of this equipment will be spread over five years, so it appears as two entries on the Accounts, as ‘Depreciation’ under Expenditure and as ‘Equipment’ under Assets in the Balance sheet.
The regular incomes and expenditures of the year contain no big surprises. I will leave the Membership Secretary to explain why membership income has increased. We just failed to make a loss on ‘Meetings’, a course of action I had been advocating in Committee. We did however succeed in making less of a profit than in the previous seasons, largely due to the generous supply of tea and coffee available at the Wisley meeting, something which seemed very popular with the membership.
Whilst the rise in Bank Interest is not a big surprise, given that this was the first full year in which I have been able to keep most of our cash in the interest bearing savings account, some has come from an unexpected source. Last autumn, HSBC conducted a review of its customers who received their gross interest, checking that they were properly entitled to do so. HOS passed this test without difficulty. In February, they made a payment £74 to our savings account ‘in respect of tax deducted for year 2007/8’! On enquiry, the bank confirmed that the savings account had been marked as taxable from its opening in July 2003, probably as a result of their error. In the meantime, no one had noticed including myself. On their suggestion, I wrote to them asking them to refund all the tax deducted and, although it arrived in March and does not appear in these accounts, a further £100 was credited to the account.
Journal costs have risen as expected, reflecting a full year at the larger size and the April 2006 rise in postal charges. Everyone should feel entirely comfortable with these costs, the Journal being a major pillar of the Society.
The automatic subscription that all meeting attendees have made to the Equipment Fund over recent years was suspended after last year’s AGM, the Committee accepting my view that we had an embarrassment of cash to hand. However, I was pleased and most impressed when, at the turn of the year, Tony Hughes sent me a cheque for £125 for that fund, this being the proceeds of the sale of his Notelets. As money has been spent on equipment, the notional value of the Equipment Fund, having reached a maximum value of £1045, has now been set to zero.
Looking to the next season, costs will inevitably rise. We face higher charges for postage - second class have just gone up again, from 24p to 27p, and this will impact on Journal Distribution and Secretarial expenses. The present trend to higher fuel prices will further increase General expenses – the rate paid for going to a committee meeting will rise from its present 15p a mile to 25p on 1st May – and we should anticipate that interest rates will have a downward trend. However, with the Society’s finances in such robust good health, your Treasurer faces these changes with quiet confidence.
So, pausing only to thank Tony Beresford for his rigorous but very helpful approach to examining the accounts, I will end by saying that I have no intention of proposing any change to the modest dues we charge for being a member of this very successful society.
Iain Wright, Hon Treasurer, Hardy Orchid Society, 18th April 2008