Volunteer Training - Society/Technical Council Finances-Financial Reports: How to Read the Financial Statement

The Financial Statement shows the following cumulative data.

• Annual budget for each account
• A: actual
• B: budget

The Financial Statement also reports:

• activity on a monthly basis;
• year-to-date totals (YTD).

The Financial Statement is best read by Account category, grouped rows that provide the financial details for money budgeted and spent in that Account.  Each of these accounts make up your Cost Center.  Accounts that are sources of Revenue are listed first.  One such Revenue account's group of rows is indicated by the red box on this example. The first row of the group lists the Account number and name, 3018000000 Society/Technical Council Fees Hard Copy.  The next row "A," lists the Actual revenue from that account, then row "B" lists the Budgeted revenue in that Account.  The first column of the A and B rows (shown by green arrow) is the Annual Budget.  Actual (A) rows will have a 0.0 in this column. The budgeted is shown in the B row. The second column (purple arrow) is the Year to Date total. The remaining columns (cyan bracket) break down the total on a monthly basis for A and B.  So, for the 3018000000 Account (red box), we can see that the budgeted number was 1.2 ($1200), as shown in Row B column 1, and Year-to-date .9 ($900), Row A column 2 has come in as revenue.  Furthermore, we can see the monthly breakdown of this revenue, showing that .8 ($800) was received in January and .1 ($100) in February, which was close to the budget number for January, but fell off in February.  And, the revenue in this Account expected in March (.2), did not materialize.  Details like this can point out areas that need further investigation and action to keep the Society/Technical Council finances on track.

After the last Revenue Account, the Total Revenue is displayed in a set of A and B rows (blue outlined box) with the same available columns. Then the Expense Account begin (orange box) with the same conventions as the Revenue Account.  Expense Account are then totaled at the end. If a Account does not have a B row, it was not budgeted.

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