Of course the very first thing you should do is visit the bank and get her off the bank account, and get your signatures on it.
Then keep pressing her for the records. Tell her you'll come by her house to pick them up and then do it (be friendly, just say that you want to make it as easy for her as possible). It's likely she'll turn over as much as she can. Then keep following up for whatever's missing, but hopefully you'll at least have the check book and the bulk of recent records.
Third, you need to follow up and make sure she's done the taxes and/or submitted whatever forms need to be submitted to the state and the IRS (if you are a 501c3 corp, for example).
Fourth, think about some of the processes in place. In our PTO, for example, the treasurer does not make the deposits. Someone from the board does, and it can be different people -- who can get to the bank the next day. We have processes in place so that the money doesn't get lost between the counting and the deposit, so we can have that flexibility.
She turned in her resignation last Thursday, which was backdated to our meeting in January. She stated she dates it for that time as that is when she should have resigned. Can we even accept that?
When i emailed her to ask that all financials needed to be turned in that Thursday afternoon. She stated in her resin letter that all financials would be turned over to the board by this Monday (yesterday) at the latest. We still have nothing from her...Our bylaws state that the Treasurer must turn over all documents when requested.
The rest of the board is meeting tonight as it was originally planned that we would need to reconcile all financials so they would be accurate for our next meeting...if there are no financials to look over, what is it that we should be doing next?
Hi there!
Sorry to hear about this. It sounds like the treasurer was either overwhelmed, in over her head, or just too busy with life. This happens. It was good of her to try, but clearly it didn't work out.
The really good news for you is that nothing appears to be lost.
Will you be holding elections this spring? If so, can you get the word out now that you need a new treasurer? Look around, chat with parents you know to see if there's anyone who can step up. You may even be able to find someone who can step in before elections. In the meantime, would you and the remaining board members be able to handle the treasurer's job until someone either steps up or until election time?
The problem started when PTO received 30-day notices that invoices had not been paid for services or goods used. I asked our Treasurer to get them taken care of and she said that she has just been busy and hadn't gotten a chance to take care of them. Then the same companies sent 60-day past due notices. I then talked to her about these things needing to get paid, and she said that new children in her neighborhood had been stealing mail and that those payments were sent must have been some of the mail that they had stolen. I later found out that all of the invoices that were due at the end of November were not paid until January. Next, parents were complaining that checks from previous events had not cleared their bank accounts and they were wondering when they were deposited.
In response to this, I pulled bank statements to look at things closer to make sure things were lining up and that maybe it was just clerical errors, but I found that the deposits from those events in October were not made at all. She was not present for January's meeting, so I called an executive board meeting to get this straightened out. When we met that night, she had made a deposit THAT day for the amount that should have been deposited in October; she stated that she had just been super busy and had forgotten to take it to the bank. As a board, we went over the importance of having correct and current statements and that all deposits need to be made within 2-3 days of an event. We also told her all reports needed to be reconciled and up-to-date before February's meeting.
She was not present for February's meeting, but did turn in a Treasurer's report. However, nothing has been changed. The report still shows that the October deposit was made in October, and that all past due invoices were paid when they were due.
I emailed her to let her know that her February report would need to be amended and gave her ample time to do this before our March meeting. Her response was "I'll look at it, but as of now I resign." My question is what do we do now? Technically, there is no money missing, but she makes it very difficult to resolve the situation that she started in the first place. HELP!
