We currently have a local bank account in which I deposit
our monthy payments. I electronically transfer money to
iour broker every so often. It does not sound like
Accountsynch can account for anyhting but the brokerage
input. So would I continue to manually enter our deposits?
The One Minute Treasurer info does not seem to acknowlesge
this situation. We also have checks to last forever (grin)
, so my expenses will be paid by check. None of this seems
to mesh with what I have been reading. I would hope I could
coninue to wqrite checks and put our depsits in a local bank
and just account for those transactions manually. Does that
work?

Also, do you all back up your data to a disk or to your hard
drive? How do you do this?

Sandy Starr

Sandy Starr writes:
> We currently have a local bank account in which I deposit
> our monthy payments.

One of the things we highly recommend is that you drop your local bank
account. Most big brokers provide you with free checks and checking.
In this day and age, there's simply no reason to keep a local bank
account for invesment clubs. Indeed, it may even be costing your club
money if you don't keep a minimum balance.

The best way to understand The One Minute Treasurer concepts is to
read about it:

http://www.bivio.com/club_cafe/files/TheOneMinuteTreasurer.pdf

If you have any questions, email them here. We'll be able to help you
understand why it's much better to simplify your accounting so you can
focus on improving your investment returns.

> Also, do you all back up your data to a disk or to your hard
> drive? How do you do this?

bivio backs up your data, and as I mentioned earlier today, we've
never lost a byte of customer data. For tax auditing purposes, we
recommend printing out your returns on paper, and storing them in two
locations.

It's also very easy to backup your bivio accounting on your hard
drive, if that's what you really want to do. This help page explains
everything you need to do:

http://www.bivio.com/hp/exporting-club-data.html

Feel free to email here or support@bivio.com if this explanation is
not sufficient.

Cheers,
Rob

Sandy, Rob gave you good advice about not maintaining two accounts, but
meanwhile, back at the ranch, you want to know how to transfer a balance
from bank to broker. Go to Accounting>Accounts, click on transfer for the
screen that will allow you to do just that.

Gene Rooks, Director
Space Coast Chapter

I guess my question is, do I have to move the checking function to the
broker? I understand what you recommend. Is it possible to still do that
part manually with Accountsync?


----- Original Message -----
From: "Rob Nagler" <nagler@bivio.biz>
To: "The Club Cafe" <club_cafe@bivio.com>
Sent: Friday, December 22, 2006 5:33 PM
Subject: Re: club_cafe: Accountsynch


> Sandy Starr writes:
>> We currently have a local bank account in which I deposit
>> our monthy payments.
>
> One of the things we highly recommend is that you drop your local bank
> account. Most big brokers provide you with free checks and checking.
> In this day and age, there's simply no reason to keep a local bank
> account for invesment clubs. Indeed, it may even be costing your club
> money if you don't keep a minimum balance.
>
> The best way to understand The One Minute Treasurer concepts is to
> read about it:
>
> http://www.bivio.com/club_cafe/files/TheOneMinuteTreasurer.pdf
>
> If you have any questions, email them here. We'll be able to help you
> understand why it's much better to simplify your accounting so you can
> focus on improving your investment returns.
>
>> Also, do you all back up your data to a disk or to your hard
>> drive? How do you do this?
>
> bivio backs up your data, and as I mentioned earlier today, we've
> never lost a byte of customer data. For tax auditing purposes, we
> recommend printing out your returns on paper, and storing them in two
> locations.
>
> It's also very easy to backup your bivio accounting on your hard
> drive, if that's what you really want to do. This help page explains
> everything you need to do:
>
> http://www.bivio.com/hp/exporting-club-data.html
>
> Feel free to email here or support@bivio.com if this explanation is
> not sufficient.
>
> Cheers,
> Rob
>
>
>
>
>
>
>

Sandy, you can make whatever entries you need to do that aren't going
through AccountSynch manually. You should ask your broker if you can
establish free checking with them, it would make it easier not to deal with
two statements and entries for both each month. Gene

> In this day and age, there's simply no reason to keep a local bank
> account for invesment clubs.

Crow River has a separate bank account--a small local bank with totally free
checking. Consider this: Our meeting is on Tuesday night. The treasurer
makes a night drop on the way home. The bank processes all night drops by 9
a.m. The treasurer puts in an ACH transfer of funds and our buy order in
the morning. The money is usually transferred in time for our buy order to
go through in the afternoon session. We own stock the day after our
meeting.

Now, another club might gather the checks, tuck them into an envelope and
mail them to the broker. It takes them 2-3 days to get there and 2-3 days
to be processed. A week later they get to buy their stock. Hopefully, the
price is still in the buy range.

Some inconveniences we simply don't mind!

Sandy, we use the Accounts|Transfer function for this, but we'll need to be
careful with this since the broker will no doubt report their half of the
transfer (the deposit) to bivio. I'm sure it's a simple fix.

Lynn Ostrem, President
garbagecop@earthlink,net
Crow River Investment Club
www.bivio.com/crowriver

Lynn, you are right that the broker will report receipt of funds, but that
will still balance with bivio, if the transfer from bank to broker has been
done. She would then need to delete that 'deposit received' posting from
Account Synch, since it doesn't need to be distributed to anyone. Gene

We too have a separate bank account because the broker didn't offer a
checking money market account. Broker issued checks are only payable to
the partnership, thus requiring us to have a bank account in the
partnership's name to deposit broker withdrawals. If transfers are
going to appear to AccountSynch as member deposits then it appears we'll
have to either delete the transactions or recharacterize them as a
transfer, if that's possible. Since I've never used AccountSynch, I'll
just have to wait and see.

John Munn



Gene Rooks wrote:

> Lynn, you are right that the broker will report receipt of funds, but
> that will still balance with bivio, if the transfer from bank to
> broker has been done. She would then need to delete that 'deposit
> received' posting from Account Synch, since it doesn't need to be
> distributed to anyone. Gene
>

John Munn writes:
> We too have a separate bank account because the broker didn't offer a
> checking money market account.

You might check again, or you might switch brokers. *Many* clubs just
write checks from their broker to pay for withdrawals.

Again, we are trying to save everybody time and energy. Another
example is our recommendation for handling expenses:

http://www.bivio.com/hp/out-of-pocket-expenses.html

It's tragic imiho that we have to spend so much energy on unTeaching
clubs so they can save hours of unnecessary accounting work.
Accounting is our business. We've given advice to thousands of
clubs. The One Minute Treasurer(tm) concepts are tried and true, or
bivio wouldn't be recommending them.

> If transfers are going to appear to AccountSynch as member deposits
> then it appears we'll have to either delete the transactions or
> recharacterize them as a transfer, if that's possible.

That's exactly right, and AccountSync identifies transfers that way.

Rob

Lynn Ostrem writes:
> Now, another club might gather the checks, tuck them into an envelope and
> mail them to the broker. It takes them 2-3 days to get there and 2-3 days
> to be processed. A week later they get to buy their stock. Hopefully, the
> price is still in the buy range.

Lynn, you know we all love you at bivio! However, there are a lot of
assumptions you are making here about how checks are deposited, when
members should pay in, and how to managage cash. Here are some things
we recommend that will simplify your club's operations *and* improve
your AIRR:

* Since Check 21 was enacted, checks clear electronically. There's no
  delay.

* When you buy stock, you have three days to pay for it.

* Brokers process the checks the same day they receive them. They
  want the money in their accounts, not sitting in someone's inbox.

* Consider setting up direct ACH. If your broker won't allow it,
  switch brokers. My club was doing direct deposits in the '90s.
  This is the cheapest and fastest way to get money to your broker
  from your members.

* Let members pay in when they have money, not when there's a meeting.
  They can either send a check directly to the broker, or many members
  will be able to ACH directly from their bank accounts to the broker.
  They can even set up a regular payment. It's easy, fast, and gives
  them control and responsibility. If they don't pay up, well,
  perhaps they don't belong in your club.

* Let the valuation date be the same as the member deposit date.
  
* The One Minute Treasurer(tm) recommends quarterly payments, not
  monthly.

* If you have cash in your club, put it in SPY, not in a money market
  account. Buying decisions take time. SPY will give you a better
  return on average than a money market account. The $10 commission
  will be offset by the average gains, especially if you put money in
  your club quarterly, not monthly.

Clubs which take this advice will have a lot more time for investing.
While it is "easy" to do accounting, it's also time, and time is
money. Your ROI on time spent researching stocks is higher than any
time you spend fiddling with accounting, checks, and the like.

Cheers,
Rob

In The One Minute Treasurer pdf file it says to check the
"The One Minute Treasurer" box and save $30 per year. When
I set up our club I saw no reference to this at all. I
could not find the one minute treasurer mentioned on our
club site. I'm still learning my way around the site, so
may not have know where to go to find it.

Thanks,
Dottie Hinz

Rob Nagler wrote:

> read about it:
>
> http://www.bivio.com/club_cafe/files/TheOneMinuteTreasurer.pdf
>

Dorothy C. Hinz writes:
> In The One Minute Treasurer pdf file it says to check the
> "The One Minute Treasurer" box and save $30 per year. When
> I set up our club I saw no reference to this at all.

This was a "pre-release" product idea. It's something we were trying
out on people. I'm sorry for the confusion.

We're working on a new, more complete version of The One Minute
Treasurer that will include more instructions on how to use bivio.
Hopefully, we'll get that our there early next week.

Cheers,
Rob