2015Q1 Reports: Treasurer

Graeme Hirst, ACL Treasurer

(1) 2013 finally finalized

The 2013 books, which were much delayed, are now finally complete. The primary reason for the delay was that there were many errors in the membership payment files from our software (I hope that this is now fixed), and these all had to be individually sorted out by hand by Chiaki, our bookkeeper. So even though the books were about 97% complete in time for my report last June, the final 3% was very time-consuming, and we had to ask for an extension of our U.S. IRS filing deadline from 15 August to 15 November. Chiaki finished the work by mid-October, which enabled our accountants, Nisivoccia, to complete our U.S. IRS and New Jersey state filings by the new deadline.

The final part of the 2013 work, determination of conference results and allocation of surpluses to SIGs who sponsor workshops, was unfortunately further delayed by a couple of months of extensive travel on my part (largely for family reasons) just as the data became available. This part is my job, not Chiaki's, as it involves recategorizing some of the data in an unofficial way. (For example, in the formal books, for a SIG workshop, income from registration fees may be attributed directly to the workshop, whereas the corresponding expenses of the room, AV, and coffee breaks will be part of the package attributed to the conference as a whole.)

I have now completed this task, with the following results:

(a) NAACL 2013 Atlanta made a modest surplus of $10,164 (2.8% of gross revenue), of which $2043 goes to SIGs, leaving $8121 for NAACL.

(b) ACL 2013 Sofia made a very modest surplus of $20,134 (3.7% of gross revenue), of which $2082 goes to SIGs, leaving $18,051 for central ACL.

(c) EMNLP 2013 Seattle broke even for SIGDAT, with an epsilon loss of $198 (.09% of gross revenue).

(2) 2014 so far

It will be some time before we have complete books for 2014 (but much earlier this year, I hope!). However, we already have results for EACL 2014 Gothenburg: a surplus of €21,200 (15.5% of gross revenue) for EACL -- which is the level of surplus that we'd like to see at all our conferences in order to fund our other activities. In addition, partial data from EMNLP 2014 Doha sent to me just a few days ago suggests that it made a substantial surplus for SIGDAT, but I have not yet verified this.

(3) New bookkeeper

Our long-time bookkeeper, Chiaki Nemoto, resigned from Young Associates, the company with whom we contract for bookkeeping services. The company has assigned us a new bookkeeper, Samantha (Sam) Zimmerman, whom I will be meeting later this month to give her an introduction to the wondrous complexities of ACL. Chiaki had already done considerable work on 2014 before she left, but obviously it will take some time and effort for Sam to learn our structure and pick up from where Chiaki left off; this is the busiest time of year for bookkeepers here (the Canadian tax season), and she and others at Young Associates have this problem for all of Chiaki's other clients as well. So while I hope we aren't late with the books again this year, it's unlikely that we will be early.