Hi - I'm not aiming this note at anybody in particular, but I sense some confusion about some basic accounting principles. I hope nobody will be offended by a brief tutorial. An income statement shows expenses and revenues over a period of time, often one year. When I hear "full allocation of expenses and revenues in order to have a good financial picture of the IASA", I imagine an income statement that looks like this: Income Unobligated general revenues $100 Revenues specificaly tagged for IASA $100 General In-Kind Contributions $ 50 In-Kind Contributions for the IASA $ 50 Total Revenues $300 Expense ISOC meeting expense $ 50 IASA meeting expense $ 50 ISOC other expense $ 20 IASA other expense $ 20 General expense $ 60 Depreciation $ 20 Total Expense $220 Note the listing of non-cash (in-kind) contributions under income. Depreciation writes off a portion of the value of the equipment each year to reflect the lower value of the asset over time. This is accrual-based accounting, which is what Fred mentioned. This income statement meets the criteria I've heard on this list: you can break out the IASA-specific expenses and revenues, allocate the general expense and depreciation, and come up with a pro-forma income statement for the IASA activity. The basic message is: please don't lump everything over into general & administrative costs, try and allocate those costs that can be identified into IASA specific categories. Where I see the confusion is on the concept of the balance sheet, which lists assets and liabilities at any point in time. You can imagine two balance sheets: Assets: Bank Account $200 Physical Assets $100 Total Assets $300 Liabilities Funds obligated for the IASA activity $100 Other Liabilities $100 Goodwill and Equity $100 Total Liabilities $100 Alternatively, one could do this: Assets: General Bank Account $100 IETF Bank Account $100 etc... etc... The "gooodwill and equity" line is the excess of assets over liabilities. What I'm not hearing a consensus on this list about is the concept of what to do with the balance sheet On the one hand, I hear things like "quarterly payments" and "shall be deposited into the account." On the other hand, I hear that this overly constrains the accountants. The answer is you could do this either way. Even if the financial statements don't break things out into seperate bank accounts, the IASA can still receive a management accounting report that shows how assets, liabilities, expenses, and revenues are allocated. You can also add the requirement of seperate accounts on the balance sheet. That makes accounting a little bit harder, and you spend a bit more on things like bank fees, bookeeping time, and other transaction fees, but it isn't a huge deal. What I've heard on this list is quite a bit of talk about generally accepted accounting practices. I don't believe there is any doubt that ISOC practices those practices and it is a no-brainer to request allocation of line items. The request for periodic transfers of funds based on the budget process, the seperate accounts, etc... are not unusual for a self-contained "profit center" in a company. So, that can be done as well. The question for the IETF is whether the request for seperate accounts is important to you and should go into the BCP. Before everybody jumps in: the latter seems symbolically important to some folks and maybe the question is political and should be handled as such (e.g., don't ask "is this optimal" but ask "is this important enough to some people that this is a way to get consensus and move on."). $0.02, YMMV. Carl _______________________________________________ Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf