Our bank suddenly imposed a new large user fee for our
club. As a "business account", they charged us $53.67 for
deposit slips, and will probably charge when we have to
order new checks.

Is this happening to other clubs, and how are they dealing
with it?

On 1/11/2011 4:18 PM, Jeanne E Tieken wrote:
> Our bank suddenly imposed a new large user fee for our
> club. As a "business account", they charged us $53.67 for
> deposit slips, and will probably charge when we have to
> order new checks.
>
> Is this happening to other clubs, and how are they dealing
> with it?
>
>
This and other fee increases to business accounts also happened to our
BI Chapter. We changed to a local credit union that indicated that
several other customers had also changed recently.

John Bruntlett, Treasurer, MIGC

    When the checks were turned in monthly, a letter to the bank was
made (form letter).
     It simply stated there were a certain amount of checks attached,
the name of each payee, their check number and the amount of the check.
     A total was listed and a request for confirmation of receipt of
monies was requested.

     About a week or so later, the confirmation slip was received and
stapled to the file copy of the letter.
      No deposit slips were required and the procedure went flawlessly.

      Perhaps that might work in your case. The reason it was mailed
was due to the fact we live many miles from the Broker and
      it just seemed to work right for us. It was mailed the morning
after our meeting, (meeting on Wednesday-mailed on Thursday).
      Usually received and deposited by Friday. Receipt was mailed
on Monday. If you do this, it is best to find out who will be
      handling your deposit and mail the letter to the broker,
Attention: then list the name of the person. Puts a special touch to
      the procedure. And also a paper trail.................

       Just a suggestion.





On 1/11/2011 5:18 PM, Jeanne E Tieken wrote:
> Our bank suddenly imposed a new large user fee for our
> club. As a "business account", they charged us $53.67 for
> deposit slips, and will probably charge when we have to
> order new checks.
>
> Is this happening to other clubs, and how are they dealing
> with it?

I will echo Laurie's comment. While our club has a money
market account with check writing priviledges at our broker,
I have not written a check for several years.

As treasurer, I pay for most of the club's out-of-pocket
expenses, e.g. bivio subscription, BI dues, photocopies,
etc. using my personal credit card. Then I get reimbursed
from the club units with club ownership units. I can choose
either to treat the units as additional investments or cut
back on my monthly dues payment proportionally.

The only issue I can foresee is paying off a departing
member. But that could be handled by requesting the broker
issue a check directly to the member for the cash portion of
their withdrawal amount.

Of course, the this whole issue can be avoided by only using
a broker that provides check writing priviledges. Saving a
couple of bucks on a trade is not worth all the hassle
involved in dealing with these non-full service brokers.

Jack Ranby, Treasurer
Grants Partners Investment Club

Laurie Frederiksen wrote:
> Another thing to consider is whether you really need a bank account at all.Brokers will accept deposits sent directly to them.  Many offer checking.   A club really should have very little need to write checks.  It is easy to reimburse members with units of club ownership if they pay for a club expense.
> Finally,  having only one brokerage account means you only have a single account to track and reconcile.  We recommend you keep things as simple (and it sounds like cost effective) as possible by only having a brokerage account to conduct all your club business.
> -- Laurie FrederiksenInvest with your friends!www.bivio.comBecome our Facebook friend!  www.facebook.com/bivio
> Follow us on twitter!  www.twitter.com/bivio

I am on travel in Los Angeles and have not had a chance to respond to this
question, but I want to quickly add what we do at our club.

Last year we switched to Fidelity Investments for a number of reasons,
including the $7.95 commission per trade. For years we had paid about $100
per trade with a large and well-known firm. Service was great with the old
firm, but the savings per year are just too significant to ignore, even when
we typically make only a few trades per month.

In addition, Fidelity provides excellent web support and placing trades
could not be easier or more precise.

Finally, Fidelity provides the check writing capability for free. As
Treasurer, I do not write many checks, but the Club is much better served, I
hope, by having this capability and the audit trail that it provides. Our
members tend to remain in the club for many, many years. Therefore we write
checks for withdrawal only on rare occasions. At times, we have issued a
distribution when profits have happily accumulated and it will be easier to
do that with our own checking capability, as well.

Obviously, once we switched to Bivio - about two years ago - we could have
used the Unit reimbursement method to handle these expenses, but I think
that we prefer the check-writing method as easier to use and understand.

I hope that you find this comment useful.

Best Regards,

Leo

-----Original Message-----
From: club_cafe@bivio.com [mailto:club_cafe@bivio.com] On Behalf Of John W
Ranby
Sent: Tuesday, January 11, 2011 11:45 PM
To: club_cafe@bivio.com
Subject: club_cafe: Re: Club's Bank Account

I will echo Laurie's comment. While our club has a money market account with
check writing priviledges at our broker, I have not written a check for
several years.

As treasurer, I pay for most of the club's out-of-pocket expenses, e.g.
bivio subscription, BI dues, photocopies, etc. using my personal credit
card. Then I get reimbursed from the club units with club ownership units. I
can choose either to treat the units as additional investments or cut back
on my monthly dues payment proportionally.

The only issue I can foresee is paying off a departing member. But that
could be handled by requesting the broker issue a check directly to the
member for the cash portion of their withdrawal amount.

Of course, the this whole issue can be avoided by only using a broker that
provides check writing priviledges. Saving a couple of bucks on a trade is
not worth all the hassle involved in dealing with these non-full service
brokers.

Jack Ranby, Treasurer
Grants Partners Investment Club

Laurie Frederiksen wrote:
> Another thing to consider is whether you really need a bank account at
all.Brokers will accept deposits sent directly to them.  Many offer
checking.   A club really should have very little need to write checks.  It
is easy to reimburse members with units of club ownership if they pay for a
club expense.
> Finally,  having only one brokerage account means you only have a single
account to track and reconcile.  We recommend you keep things as simple (and
it sounds like cost effective) as possible by only having a brokerage
account to conduct all your club business.
> -- Laurie FrederiksenInvest with your friends!www.bivio.comBecome our
> Facebook friend!  www.facebook.com/bivio Follow us on twitter! 
www.twitter.com/bivio