Thank you, I ran the reports and it does group a few
together, but I basically had to go through and add them all
up. Is there a different heading I could list the fees under
so they show up on Bivio? Like Misc Income, I assume we
could then be taxed on this.

MJ HARNEY wrote:
> Please remove my name
> Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: John W Ranby <coljake@bivio.com>
> Date: Fri, 25 Feb 2011 18:29:38
> To: <club_cafe@bivio.com>
> Subject: club_cafe: Re: Fees
>
> Kevin Valade wrote:
> > Hello all,
> >
> > I am trying to get a report in Bivio of "late" fees, which
> > have always been entered as fees. The club then uses this
> > money to pay for misc expenses or club subscriptions ect. Is
> > there anywhere I can get a total for the last 3 years? I
> > looked under reports and did not really see anything. Thank
> > you for your help.
>
> Kevin:
>
> The direct answer to your questions is "No, there is not a
> canned report that will  list only the transactions entered
> as "fees" for a period that spans several calendar years.
> However, there are tools that will provide you with the
> information you seek.
>
> I want to avoid a discussion regarding the appropriateness
> of "fees"; however, it is important to understand that there
> is no accounting connection between the source of the funds
> paying an expense and the expense itself. There is no
> accounting or tax relationship between the expense and
> whether the source of the funds to pay the expense is member
> payments, fees, dividends, interest, or capital gains. Your
> club's practice should only be thought of as a budgeting
> tool.
>
> Full disclosure: my club never has fees so I don't have
> practical experience with them in bivio. However, I did
> enter several transactions in the demo club involving fees
> and discovered the following:
>
> 1. Multiple fees entered on the same day are consolidated
> and show up as a single entry in the "transaction" report.
> 2. Fee transactions for different dates in the same calendar
> year are all listed together in the "transaction" report for
> that calendar year.
>
> 3. So you could run a transaction report for each calendar
> year and find the "fee" transactions that way.
>
> 4. If you have a lot of fee entries, you could then export
> the data to a spreadsheet and further manipulate the data as
> you want.
>
> Hope that helps.
>
> Jack Ranby, Treasurer
> Grants Partners Investment Club

Kevin Valade wrote:
> Thank you, I ran the reports and it does group a few
> together, but I basically had to go through and add them all
> up. Is there a different heading I could list the fees under
> so they show up on Bivio? Like Misc Income, I assume we
> could then be taxed on this.
>

Kevin:

I am going to assume you have read and understand Ira's
response to your initial question in which he explained the
mechanics of recording member's payments as "fees" and the
mechanics of recording expenses. In summary, fees take money
from one member, increase the cash balance in the account in
which the payment is deposited, and increase the value of
the other member's interest in the assets of the
partnership.

If you understand the mechanics of fees and expenses, then I
have to ask "Why do you need to account for the total fees
received over extended time periods?" The reason bivio
doesn't have a canned report to produce the information you
seek I believe is that most treasurer's would never need to
know or use that information, particularly in determining
the operating expenses of the partnership. Expenses will
have to be paid even if no member ever incurred a fee.

Your initial question made it sound like you somehow are
linking the amount of money the club has available to spend
on expenses with the amount of fees received. There doesn't
have to (some might say shouldn't) be any link between the
two.

Every club has pretty standard annual operating expenses;
e.g. bivio subscription, Better Investing Dues, maybe rent
for a meeting room, and a few bucks for stamps and
photocopies. The payment of these expenses is not linked
directly to a source of income or member payments; they are
just a reduction in the assets of the partnership.
Therefore, there is no need to know the amount of fees
received in order to budget for expenses.

In any case, you need to enter fees received as "fees."
Entering them as "misc income" will cause several problems
besides having members pay tax on non-taxable funds.

Jack Ranby, Treasurer
Grants Partners Invesment Club