Congratulations on your new position as treasurer of your Hall Governing Board (HGB). The duties of each position are defined differently depending on which hall you are in and the way the position is set up in your hall’s constitution. This manual is an overview of how most halls define their HGB treasurer’s position. You will find yourself doing everything from keeping track of the funding in the ROC account, to writing checks from your halls own checking account. As an executive board member of your hall you also have some duties similar to the rest of the board. These will usually consist of putting on events and helping out on big projects. Your job is always to improve community life and make your residence hall here at the University of Maine not just a dormitory, but a home. 

I urge you, if you ever have any questions or concerns, to contact any of the Executives in Residents on Campus (ROC). We are formally trained for our positions and know how to help in situations that you face as a treasurer on a HGB. Officers can be reached on First Class or you may come in during their office hours. These hours are posted in the ROC folder.

EXPECTATIONS

There are several duties that the treasurer is responsible for. Basically the treasurer works with the money that the HGB has. This includes ROC Funds and, if you hall has one, the hall’s checking account. Dealing with money involves many checks and balances to make sure no one misuses the funds. Your job is to make sure all these checks and balances actually occur.

What is a ROC Account?

Student Auxiliary Services gives ROC $6.00 per semester, for each student living on campus. This money is broken up into four (4) parts. One of those parts goes back to the student’s own residence hall. It is put into their ROC “Hall Account.” This semester, halls are getting more money than ever before, $2.75 per student. How the funds are used is up to your hall, but to get the money the following procedure must occur:

1. Get an invoice for how much the item(s) will cost.
2. You or your ROC Representative must fill out the “Hall Withdrawal Form”
3. Make sure that your RD signs the Hall Withdrawal Form.
4. Have someone bring the “Hall Withdrawal Form” To the ROC office during the Vice President of Finical Affairs’, President’s, or Vice President’s office hours to get a check. Your will not be able to receive a check until you have turned in an invoice or receipt. 
5. Get the item(s), and bring the receipt back to the ROC office during office hours. This must be done in less than one (1) week after the check is written.
6. Make a note in your ROC Leger that the funds were taken out of your hall’s account.
   It’s very important that you and your hall’s ROC Representative work together to get the money from your ROC Account. A completed “Hall Withdrawal Form” is located in the appendix. If for some reason, a receipt is not turned in within the one-week period or if the receipt is lost the VPFA has the authority to freeze your hall’s funds. Any time that your hall funds are frozen, no matter what the reason, your HGB must complete a fund reinstatement form. On this from you must write a short description of why the form is being filled out. The ROC Rep, President, Treasurer, and RD must all sign this form for it to be accepted. After the form is received in the ROC office, there will be a one-week waiting period before you regain access to your hall money.

Hall Checking Accounts

Many halls decide to have their own checking account. It is, as previously mentioned, your responsibility to keep track of this account. This is done by using a ledger or register. There is a completed sample ledger in the appendix. It is also very important to keep all your receipts from things you purchase with funds from your checking account. This will be useful to have when you go to review your account. This is to be done every month in the ROC office. The ROC VPFA will receive all bank statements, once those are in the office you will be notified via First Class. After receiving this email you will need to go to the office during the VPFA’s office hours, with your ledger and do a bank reconciliation to make sure that the account is balanced and in good standing. This should be done within a week of notification that bank statements have arrived. If you cannot make it in to the office during the VPFA’s office hours you should make arrangements with the VPFA to meet at another time. Once your account is reconciled, the VPFA will file your bank statement and reconciliation along with any receipts that you have for the account. There is an example of a completed bank reconciliation in the appendix. 
The funding for your own hall checking account is done through fundraising that your hall does. It also is for the money your hall receives from bottle returns; this will be discussed in depth later in this manual.

The ledger can be just the register that you are given in the top of your hall’s check book, or can be accounting paper that can be placed in this binder. Either way it should have the following things filled out:

1. Check number
2. Date
3. Transaction Description
4. Amount being withdrawn/deposited
5. New Balance

It is very important to keep track of this, so when the accounts are reviewed, all this information is available for your RD and the VPFA to review.

Account Review

As stated earlier, there are several checks and balances to make sure money is not misused. The big one is the Account Review. Each month you should sit down with your Resident Director and go over what your hall spent. This is done with all your accounts, including your ROC account. This would also be a good time to discuss how the money is being used, and if there are ways to save money. 
Similar to the account review, you should arrange a meeting with the ROC’s Vice President of Financial Affairs (V.P.F.A.) once a semester to go over all expenses that you have used ROC’s funds for. The V.P.F.A will go over different ideas for making your job run more smoothly, and will help come up with ways for you to be more accurate in keeping track of the money in your different accounts. You can learn a lot from the V.P.F.A. so I suggest that you take full advantage of the time you meet with him or her, and come with questions.

Bottle Returns

As part of UMaine’s attempt to recycle, they have created an incentive for halls to start recycling more. They have placed bottle return boxes throughout all the halls. They have placed bottle return boxes throughout all the halls and have hired people to pick up those bottles and store them until the recycling trucks come back and collect them. The money that is generated from the bottles then goes back the HGB to put in its checking account. This service gives the hall $0.04 per bottle. As this is a free service to the hall, I strongly encourage you to promote it and take full advantage of it.

A check will be written up every month if you have $50.00 or more in bottle returns. If you do not have $50.00, the balance will roll over to the next month until you reach $50.00. This is to save time and money on writing checks, and encourages halls to earn more than $50.00 a month in bottle returns. 

ROC’s Financial Policy

A lot of the information above is presented in the ROC’s Financial Policy. I encourage you to look over it, and be familiar with it. It is your responsibility to make sure that your HGB is not breaking any university or ROC policies with the way it is using its funds.

APPENDIX  A: Completed Check Register

APPENDIX B: Completed Hall ROC Funds Ledger

APPENDIX C: Completed Bank Reconciliation