TREASURER'S REPORT 2020

I took over a very healthy set of figures from Roger Button and thank him for helping me settle into the job. I also thank Lawrence for certifying the accounts which would have been more difficult this year. You may remember that two years ago the Club had a very nice dinner at La Flambe, which helped to reduce our excess funds. The Committee intended to discuss something similar for 2020 but Covid  came along and so we have not incurred a similar expense this year.

BBO
When the Committee discussed having BBO sessions we agreed with the suggestion (by the EBU I think) of charging $3 per person.   You may or may not know that the Club receives a portion of the $3 BBO fee. This was a sensible amount at the time as we needed to recover some early expenses getting set up. We were not sure how many players there would be or how long we would be playing online, (I guessed until June!)  In the event we have been playing for 9 months and with an increasing number of participants. Those early expenses have been paid, but our portion of the $3 fee took some months to come through, making it difficult to be sure where we stood financially.  When we joined BBO we were told their fees would increase in September but, as this has not happened, the Committee decided to halve the BBO$ charge. This will result in Chippenham Bridge Club no longer making a profit on the fee, but if BBO does in fact increase its charge, we will probably have to increase the charge accordingly.

TOURNAMENT DIRECTORS
When considering BBO we were informed that it should be run under the auspices of a tournament director (TD) trained to run the system for which the charge would be £45 per session. We decided to train our own TD's for which the charge was £100 pp although we seem to have managed to get 4 TDs trained for £200. There is a significant workload getting each club session running and it was thought unlikely that TDs would be able to join in the bridge sessions.  It was agreed that each TD could claim £10 per session, which I understand is in line with some other clubs and overall this has worked strongly in our Club's favour.

REALBRIDGE
When calculating the RealBridge price I expected VAT to be charged, which has not happened. The number of players is also more than anticipated.  Therefore we are reducing the charge per session from £1.50 to  £1.25 and making this retrospective to our first session in December.  I know 25p is peanuts to our members but it does mean that £10 buys 8 sessions rather than 6.

ACCOUNTS
When you review the accounts you will notice that our income is reduced by approx £2500. This is partly because the amount we receive from BBO is the total of all the $3 and $1.5 paid to us less their fee (£1900), and also we did not collect any fees between mid March and end of April.

DEBTORS & CREDITORS
The debtors figure is owed to us by BBO for our use in December. The creditors figure is owed to TDs, EBU, & RealBridge.  It also includes part subscriptions paid by members who have not played online this year, to be transferred to their 2021 subscription. It also includes an amount by RealBridge members who have paid 'on account' for sessions still to be used.
Please ask me anytime if you have any questions about these figures.