Treasurer’s report
I’m not sure if I’m going to be making it to the AGM on Wednesday, so I thought I should really put up a Treasurer’s report online, and this seemed to be the logical place for it. So:
NZLARPS has had a relatively unremarkable financial year on the whole. Certainly not a bad one, but not an especially great one either. A number of profitable events have been run (thanks to all those who have helped organise them!), but some costs that aren’t attributable to specific events have weighed down on the net profit, meaning that as a whole we roughly broke even on that front. Fortunately, we have taken in a reasonable amount of money in memberships, a significant portion of which has been distributed to the regions. On the whole, we’re probably slightly better off than we were a year ago. I hope (and expect) many profitable events will be run in the coming year, and indeed we have already had at least one.
The only thing of real major note that occurred during the past year was us projecting that NZLARPS would soon hit the $60,000 revenue threshold where GST registration becomes mandatory. We did not end up hitting that point, probably mostly due to some events being delayed to the now-current financial year, but if NZLARPS can continue to grows its events, it is an inevitability that must be faced sooner or later. I believe that NZLARPS’ systems can be structured appropriately that this will not be a terribly big change for event organisers, though it will mean that everything will need to be done ‘by the book’ (e.g. proper GST receipts presented for all reimbursements, or better invoices issued directly to NZLARPS)
Due to GST registration being a relatively large change to the finances, and one with serious legal ramifications, we explored the possibility of having professional assistance with the process. To that end, I contacted a number of accounting firms, and met with representatives with three of them. Ultimately, what they offered was somewhat pricy for our tastes, and not really what we had been looking for, so when it became apparent we would not hit the threshold this year after all, we chose not to proceed further for the time being. This is something that will definitely need to be addressed by the incoming committee though, as we may well reach the threshold before the end of the current financial year.
There were two or three issues with Eventbrite during the year, but these all appeared to be one-off problems, and the usage of Eventbrite for Musketeers certainly reduced the workload on my end come year-end, and I believe made life simpler for the Musketeers Treasurer (outside those aforementioned issues), so it seems like overall a positive change for larger events - though I fear the fees involved might mean that for most smaller events it is too expensive an option. It is probably worth considering Eventbrite (or similar) for anyone expecting to be running a 100+ person event, and quite possibly much smaller too. As I recall, we discussed setting something up for all NZLARPS projects to use, but I don’t think anything has come of it as yet.
Otherwise, things are more-or-less ticking along as normal. I can’t really think of anything else to report. I am stepping down as National Treasurer at the AGM, due in large part to the fact that I am pursuing study that leaves me with little time for the Treasurer duties, and keeps other matters on my mind in place of them - which has meant that some things I might have had vague plans to do never happened. I wish the incoming National Committee, especially the incoming National Treasurer, well.