How do you handle your money?

[Urvina]

Hello,

Our team is having issues with raising money and holding an account at our university. we understand that it takes a lot of paper work to get money in and out of the account and all the precedures, but we are frustrated with not being able to get the money we need exactly when we need it.

How do other schools deal with getting money from their universities and how much of your total account is from the community?

specifically, we want to open up a private account off campus so we can get the doe whenever we need it but there would be too many consequences if something went wrong. Any thoughts on what we could do???

Thanks!

Erin Urvina
University of Alaska Anchorage

[Urvina]

Hello,

Our team is having issues with raising money and holding an account at our university. we understand that it takes a lot of paper work to get money in and out of the account and all the precedures, but we are frustrated with not being able to get the money we need exactly when we need it.

How do other schools deal with getting money from their universities and how much of your total account is from the community?

specifically, we want to open up a private account off campus so we can get the doe whenever we need it but there would be too many consequences if something went wrong. Any thoughts on what we could do???

Thanks!

Erin Urvina
University of Alaska Anchorage

[wrcRS]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by Erin:
Hello,

Our team is having issues with raising money and holding an account at our university. we understand that it takes a lot of paper work to get money in and out of the account and all the precedures, but we are frustrated with not being able to get the money we need exactly when we need it.

How do other schools deal with getting money from their universities and how much of your total account is from the community?

specifically, we want to open up a private account off campus so we can get the doe whenever we need it but there would be too many consequences if something went wrong. Any thoughts on what we could do???

Thanks!

Erin Urvina
University of Alaska Anchorage </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

i put my money in my wallet.

[Chris Clarke]

We have an account through the university that holds all of our money. There is basically two ways that we pay for things.

1) We purchase through Mech Eng Stores, which takes it directly from the account. We try to do this as much as possible.

2) One of our members pays for it (usually on their credit card) and files a reimburstment through the account. Reimburstments have taken over 3 months for some purchases, which can suck.

If you are asking about sponsorship, I am sure there are lots of threads on here about that. My only piece of advice is try and get a commerence/marketing student on the team to do the majority of the sponsorship/financing stuff. It takes a huge load off, and they do a better job of it also.

Chris

[Ben Beacock]

We're set up the same way as Chris. However, I am strongly suggesting another method for next year's team. It can take months for sponsorship money to make it into our account, yet they will instantly hold money for a purchase order that hasn't even had a cheque written yet. The purchasing department has also refused to buy from one company making US$2200 worth of custom CVs and axles so we were forced to find an 'intermediate' buyer and fund the 50% deposit ourselves while we sorted it out. The department secretary does order things for us straight from our account with a VISA, but doesn't follow up on things to make sure they arrive in a timely fashion. I don't think there are many orders that go by without some kind of followup call on my part, or getting the quote in the first place, or returning parts, ect.

The only reason we are using the univ account is that the univ itself gave a large donation, which would have been very tricky to transfer to an off-campus account. I think the next team may end up with 2 accounts, and try to get as much sponsorship into the off-campus account for 'situations'

whew, ending rant.

[CMURacing - Prometheus]

most universities don't appreciate student groups having their own external accounts, for a variety of reasons (we've tried in both the organizations i've done money for), so we go through the university. our SAE purchasing is far easier than my other group, because we go through the meche department rather than student affairs.

but yea, talk to your advisor and his/her secretary. there's already a system in place in the dept, just get into it and find some money.

[Agent4573]

We have to have an account at our university to keep all our money in them. Sometimes its a pain in the ass but its not to bad... Anything under 300 bucks we just buy on our own credit cards and once we get teh reciepts we can get a reimbursement check within a week. Anything over 300 bucks and we have to be "pre-approved" and have the school write a check directly from our account.

[Patrick W. Crane]

we run one off campus and one on. the one off is saved for purchases that need imidiate funding and the goes through the slow as shit university account.

[gug]

we had a uni account too. we were really friendly with the purchasing officer in mech eng, which was essential because she had to go way above and beyond the call of duty for us by following up on orders, arranging delivery, organising our receipts and reinbursment, etc.

we had a very detailed budget, and as long as we were under budget we could go out and buy small items (under AUD$200) and easily get reinbursed. when we got over budget things became more difficult. last years team left us with about $6000 debt i think, which the university had to cover, and then our team was told that we would have to pay it back as much as possible and not let ourselves fall into debt.

so yeah, in summary, if you have to have a uni account, really try not to fall into debt. its easy to happen, we had receipts and accounts needing to be paid for months after the competition.

[fsae_alum]

There are advantages and disadvantages for both (on and off-campus accounts). We ran an on-campus account for years, but it took FOREVER to get money out of it. Not very practical when you need to go to Home Depot at 3 in the morning and buy $50 worth fiberglass resin to finish a body panel. Our university also had a tendency in the past to want for us to submit 3 quotes for parts we wanted to buy and they would purchase the cheapest one (not exactly what you're looking for when you're building a racecar). They also required us to get signatures from the Faculty Advisor and then over to the Student Organization office and then finally to Accounting. The flip side to all of this is that the university had nowhere to biotch about "mis-appropriation" of funds. Unfortunately, this method of purchasing REALLY slows down the progress on building a car.

With regards to an off-campus account, that's all good because you can get your parts antime without digging into your own pocketbook for the most part. Unfortunately, most REALLY big sponsorship $$$$ comes as a result of the sponsor being able to write it off as a donation to a chartiable organization with a 501(c)(3) number. As a result, they must either give it to the school (501(c)(3) in itself and run the risk of it going to buy somebody in a front office a mohogany desk) OR your organization must go through the work of getting your own 501(c)(3) status, which can take up to a year to get. That has complications too though as we found out. Turns out the school likes to know how much money YOU'RE getting as a result of your association with them. In some instances, they might think that the money actually belongs to them, even though it is clearly given by your sponsor directly to your roganization. By this I mean that some schools think that SAE at University of _____ actually implies that your organization is a part of the university and therefore, what's yours is theirs.

So what's the solution, convince your school that they need to set you up with a debit type account and give you (or your president, chair, etc...) a debit card. Transactions are instant, you still maintain your tax deduction status, and everything is pseudo cool.

[bob.paasch]

As fsae_alum notes above, 501(c)(3)status is critical for your outside donors. If you run your donation through an off-campus account, then either 1) your SAE student chapter will have to apply for and maintain 501(c)(3)status with the IRS or 2) your donors can't deduct the donation. Non-deductability of donations will severely hamper your fund-raising ability. Maintaining 501(c)(3)status means some serious accounting and filing of reports with the IRS, something I wouldn't want a bunch of engineering students doing.

The third option is to give donors the school's tax ID number but run the money through an off-campus account. This is illegal, and you risk the future of your student chapter.

At OSU, we run all of our donations through the OSU Foundation. They automatically send a thank you letter to the donor with the University's tax ID number. They do all the accounting and file all the tax forms with the IRS. Our team members can can ask the ME Dept accountant to purchase parts on the Dept credit card or on a PO. If there's a need for speed they can buy stuff on their personal credit card and by submitting the invoice get reimbursed, usually within two weeks. The accountant keeps all the invoices filed, and makes copies for the teams at cost report time.

Bob Paasch
Faculty Advisor
Oregon State University