Totally understand your concern... the sooner you get to the bottom of this, the better. The last thing you need is for the new treasurer to back out. Sounds like you should perhaps get the 3 of you in a room with all the information and go over all the financial records and reconcile the books. Can you create a deadline and use that to create a greater sense of urgency? ... i.e. We have our spring program coming up and we need to have all our finances accounted for and reported to the school by X date?
Here are a few articles that you might like to share:
Hello. I am new to being President this year. At the start of the year, we got a new Treasurer. The past Treasurer was willing to stay on and train the new and had a timeframe of 30 days to do so. Due to a HUGE fundraiser that took up most everybody's time in Sept/Oct we voted on extending that transfer another 30 days.
It is now March and the transfer has not been made. There were numerous reasons...several illnesses, holidays, a surgery, etc. But it's been long enough. Now they are actually beginning the training process and the new Treasurer refuses to take over until the account is reconciled and balance. I can't say I blame her. The new Treasurer is saying the account is off (in some way) to the tune of $600. Best I can tell, the internal books do not reconcile to the accountant's 990 records, nor do they reconcile to the bank.
I questioned the current Treasurer via email as to 1) when the last month is that the account has been reconciled to the bank and 2) were the accountants adjustments made at the start of the year so we had a 'clean' opening balance. That was a week ago and she still has not gotten back to me. I would think answering question #1 would be easy and not require any research.
I offered to help get the account balanced so it can be transferred (my background is accounting). To me, she says "Oh, the new Treasurer and I can clean it up easily and won't take too long". To the new Treasurer she says she is willing to hire outside help and pay for it personally to get it cleaned up.
Sounds to me like it is a total mess and perhaps has not been balanced a good bit of the year and she's just afraid to tell me! She also mentioned to me that "there have been months I have been off, but the bank was always higher so I didn't worry about it"....
I DO NOT suspect any kind of fraud here, just perhaps, a volunteer that is in over her head and has not asked for help. But it is now March and we have 3 months left to get this cleaned up and transferred over to the new Treasurer.
