What should the treasurer report at every meeting?

Most treasurer’s reports are a person reading aloud numbers that everyone in the room already has in front of them.

It’s an honest instinct — the treasurer feels responsible for the numbers, so the treasurer walks the board through the numbers. But twelve minutes of line items produces a board that has heard the finances and understood nothing. Meanwhile the one thing that actually mattered — that the fall appeal is running thirty percent behind last year — went by in the same tone as the utility bill.

Here’s a better shape. It takes about five minutes, it works every month, and the board comes out of it knowing where the organization stands.

First: send the statements ahead

This is the move that makes everything else possible.

The financial statements — budget-to-actual, balance sheet, and whatever else your board reviews — go in the packet with the agenda, several days before the meeting. Board members are expected to read them. The treasurer does not read them aloud.

That frees the live minutes for the part that requires a room: judgment, questions, and decisions. Numbers are better on paper. Interpretation is better out loud.

The four-part report

1. Where we are against budget. Two or three sentences, at the level of the whole. “We’re five months into the fiscal year. Revenue is at forty-one percent of budget, expenses at thirty-nine. Both are close to where we’d expect at this point.” If you’re off, say by how much and why in the same breath.

2. Cash position and runway. How much cash is on hand, and how long it lasts at the current burn. This is the number a board most needs and least often hears — an organization can be on budget and still be three weeks from a payroll problem, because budgets are annual and payroll is Friday. If your revenue is seasonal, say what the next trough looks like: “We’re comfortable through March. April is the tight month, as it always is.”

3. Anything unusual or off-trend. This is the heart of the report and the reason the board is listening. One grant came in late. Insurance renewed nineteen percent higher. The fall appeal is behind. A restricted gift arrived that can’t be spent on operations no matter how much the room wishes otherwise. Name the exceptions, say what you think they mean, and say whether you’re worried. A treasurer who tells the board “this one is normal seasonal noise, this one I’m watching” is doing the actual job.

4. What the board needs to decide. End by handing the board its work. Sometimes it’s “nothing this month, accept the report.” Sometimes it’s “we need to approve the transfer from reserves,” or “the auditor’s engagement letter needs a vote,” or “if the appeal stays behind through January, we’ll need to talk about the spring hire.” Make the ask explicit and let it become a motion.

That’s the whole report. Position, cash, exceptions, decisions.

The treasurer’s other job

The financial reporting is the visible half. The quieter half is making sure the rest of the board understands the finances well enough to govern.

Every trustee carries the duty of care — the obligation to be reasonably informed before deciding. That duty doesn’t get delegated to the person who’s good with numbers. If the board is nodding along to reports it doesn’t follow, the board isn’t discharging its responsibility, and no amount of treasurer diligence fixes that.

Practical version: use plain language, define a term when you use it, and treat questions as the point rather than an interruption. Once a year, walk new members through how to read the statements. A treasurer whose board asks good questions is succeeding, not being second-guessed.

The audit question

Boards ask whether they need an audit. The honest answer is: it depends, and here’s how to tell.

An independent audit may be required by your state’s charitable registration rules above a revenue threshold, by a federal award, by a major funder, or by your own bylaws. Those are the places to look first. Below those thresholds, many smaller organizations use a review — less thorough, considerably cheaper — or a compilation, which offers no assurance at all.

Check your state’s requirements and your grant agreements, and if you’re near a threshold, ask your CPA once and write the answer down. What every board should do regardless: whatever engagement you have, the auditor reports to the board, not to management, and the board should meet with them without staff in the room at least once a year.

Separation of duties, in plain words

The treasurer is not the bookkeeper. The treasurer oversees; someone else records.

The reason isn’t suspicion of any particular person. It’s that when one person can both spend money and record the spending, there’s no one left to catch an honest mistake — and the person in that seat has no way to prove they didn’t make a dishonest one. Good controls protect the trustworthy far more than they constrain anyone else.

So, in practice: the person who enters transactions shouldn’t be the only person reviewing the bank statement. Signing checks alone, above some threshold your board sets, shouldn’t be one person’s power — require a second signature, or at minimum a second set of eyes on the statement each month. And the treasurer should reconcile, or watch someone reconcile, rather than being both the hand and the witness.

Small organizations push back here, reasonably: there aren’t enough people. The workable version is that a board member who isn’t the treasurer reviews the monthly bank statement before it’s filed. It takes ten minutes and it’s most of the protection.

The one-sentence version

Send the statements ahead, then spend five minutes on where you are against budget, how much cash you have and how long it lasts, what’s off-trend and what you make of it, and what the board needs to decide — and make sure somebody other than you is looking at the bank statement.