I’m looking for people’s recommendations on software or services to manage league fees and payouts - we have had a few thousand bucks a year changing hands, all cash in the past. We’ve had a designated treasurer for quite a while to manage things month to month but now we’ve got the IFPA fees getting scraped off the top so there’s a paper trail. It’s also just a lot of cash to be collecting and handing out monthly so using venmo or something has come up but that’s yet further from the cash-in-an-envelope model. The league doesn’t take a cut besides the IFPA fee, the rest of the money is just pay in on week one pay out on the last week.
Anyways, the last thing we want is for one of us to get audited so we’d prefer to do it on the up-and-up with minimum hassle. This can’t be the first time this has come up. Any recommendations?
The treasurer updates the file, there’s file history, and other league managers can verify the accounting.
Also, have defined processes for taking money and giving it to the treasurer. That way, everyone knows how it’s supposed to work, so there’s no confusion at the end of the night with “oh, I signed him up, did he not give you money” or something similar. It may seem like overkill, but it works to have everyone be on the same page and minimizing the “bus factor” (would someone else be able to understand and take over if the original person was hit by a bus).
Appreciate it- we already have that level done, my question is more like the next step up from that to ensure we have correctly accounted for things so there aren’t issues with fees and payouts going through someone’s bank/venmo/paypal/etc account.
The biggest problem with using a digital service like venmo or whatever is that it has to be connected to a bank account. I hate the idea of mixing league money with personal finances. This is the advantage of cash.
Of course, with the new IFPA fees, it is now pretty much necessary that the fees collected are put into an account somewhere. SCPL is currently looking into getting a bank account, but they all require a minimum balance of something ridiculous like $500. We might have to run a fundraiser or something just to seed the thing.
Many banks have minimum aggregate balance requirements, not necessarily per-account… so it may be possible for your league’s treasurer to create a new account for the league that’s associated with their personal account(s) at that bank to avoid service fees / minimum balance requirements, while still keeping all the league’s transactions separate.
I can confirm that my business account with a credit union didn’t have a minimum balance or any fees. We did need an operating agreement, EIN number and other legal paperwork, but we’re a partnership LLC.
I take money, keep track of it in a spreadsheet that I share the link to, and pay out cash at the end of the season less my cost for trophies and posters. I use my personal PayPal to pay the IFPA the state tax on my league and then pay myself back out of league cash.
Are you worried about the IRS? Should I be worried about the IRS? If so, I’ll quite quickly go to a no fee league and drop IFPA submissions like a hot potato. It’s already enough hassle taking money from nearly 30 people, the last thing I want to have to do is more tax forms and be paying back the players even less of what they’re putting in, which already isn’t very much.