Introduction
The Association has enjoyed a period of financial stability in which strong royalty income from JIPA has been coupled with efficiency savings driven by the Secretary and Treasurer. As a result we have had a surplus in each year, and our total assets have grown by more than 80% over four years. This is despite the continued decline in the value of the euro against sterling, which has reduced the real value of members’ subscriptions by around 15% over the same period.
Accounts showing income and expenditure for the four years are included below. No independent audit has been conducted, and the Treasurer takes the view that such an audit would be an unnecessary expense. It is not required by our own Statues and By-Laws, nor by UK law. As a small private company we are legally exempt from audit by a wide margin and likely to remain so: our assets of approximately £140K amount to less than 4% of the threshold level at which an audit may be required (currently £3.62 million).
Representative figures over four years
Because payments shown in the accounts are commonly out of step with the activities to which they relate, a more helpful general picture of our financial operation can be gained from average figures over the four years.
Income
The average net income from membership subscriptions was approximately £6430 per year, and the average net income from JIPA was about £18365 per year. In very broad terms, therefore, in the years under consideration, about three quarters of our income came from JIPA, and one quarter from subscriptions.
Liabilities
The Association's main annual expenditure is a payment to CUP for the copies of each JIPA issue supplied to members (and from 2015 for online access). This annual liability can be thought of as consisting of three components, corresponding to the three categories of membership (Full, Student, and Life). The IPA is unusual among comparable bodies not only in preserving a Life membership category, but in having a disproportionately large number of such members (currently 181). In 2012, for example, the numbers of Life members and of paying (Full or Student) members were approximately equal. The cost of providing services to our Life members is thus a major factor to be considered in any financial planning.
Conference and student support
On average, the Association spent £2850 per year on conference support in the years 2011–2014 (especially as student awards). This represented about 44% of our subscription income for the years.
In connection with ICPhS2015, twenty-two Student Awards and twenty Gösta Bruce travel scholarships have been allocated. The Student Awards will amount to approximately £7000, which has yet to be discharged (as a direct one-off payment to ICPhS) and thus appears under ‘Liabilities’ on the current balance sheet. The Gösta Bruce travel scholarships total €5000 (approximately £3500) and funds for them have already been moved. A persistent difficulty for the Treasurer is that of making relatively small international payments without incurring unreasonable costs. On this occasion, by offering a range of cost-effective options, the twenty payments have been made for a total charge of £58, an overhead of less than 2%. (Note that this figure refers to bank charges, not currency losses, which are unavoidable).
The Gösta Bruce fund had received no new income between mid-2011 and 2014, but a number of generous donations were received in 2015. Donations are now collected through a dedicated webpage, which greatly simplifies the administration of the fund. In the Treasurer's view, this renders it unnecessary to establish a separate bank account for the fund, as was previously suggested. To do so might in fact be financially disadvantageous, since the account would attract its own allocation of bank charges. In general, it is better to concentrate funds into as few accounts as possible to minimise charges. The Association may, however, wish to consider the spreading of funds across two banks to protect its assets under the Financial Services Compensation Scheme.
