I have been acting as treasurer since June, when Mia stood down due to other commitments.

Mia prepared the financial report for the year to 31^st March 2002 and I have prepared a report following the same format covering the seven months to the end of October. Both these reports are on the website.

I want to talk briefly about the format of the reports, then summarise the most important points.

The top portion of each report (roughly the first printed page) shows how we got from the bank balance at the start of the period to the balance at the end.

This is by money that has come in, in the form of grants and subscriptions from members mainly, and payments.

Under the Income heading, the $10,000 grant marked "WWF for Computer Conference", I believe should actually be recorded as two $5,000 grants, one from the Community Trust for computer equipment, and one from the WWF for training for the conference. I haven't changed Mia's report, but I have changed the descriptions in the report for the last seven months, where the unspent amount is carried over.

The next part of the report, below where it says "Balance Bank Statement", is like a balance sheet, showing the NZERN's funds, including what is already allocated (such as the grants that are tagged for a particular purpose), the operating surplus for the period, and the accumulated operating surplus - that is, the "untagged" funds.

I want quickly to summarise how the grants were spent, since they are the largest part of these figures. We started in 2001 with $10,000 from the previous year tagged for computer equipment. We got a further $1,000 in November making a total of $11,000. We had spent slightly more than this on computer equipment by April this year, $6,800 of it in June on several computers, and the rest in lesser amounts on components such memory chips and cables. In March this year we got a further $5,000 grant for computer equipment, which carries over to my report for the last seven months, which, added to grants from DOC and the WWF makes a total of $18,000 that could be spent on computer equipment. $5,000 of this was spent in April on a computer for doing GIS mapping (also for the training in GIS mapping), a further $5,000 in August, roughly half of which was for a computer and half for software programs, and in October $4,000 was spent on a UPS or uninterruptible power supply unit, to safeguard the computers and data. These figures are in rough terms. In fact the total spending has been nearer $14,900. This leaves roughly $3,100 tagged for computer equipment. We have ordered further equipment for video editing to a value of about $4,000. This is being made up for us, and we could still alter the order to get the amount down nearer the $3,100 left. However in the financial report I've recorded it as $4,000.

We also gained a grant of $925 for Bush Telly equipment last year, and have spent slightly more than this on a second-hand video camera, a tripod, and some blank tapes.

Other than grants, NZERN's main income is subscriptions from members: $1,900 last year, and $1,000 for the last seven months. On average this is $155 of income a month (for the last seven months the average is actually $10 lower). This should be seen in the context of web hosting charges of $112.50 a month. There are other obvious operating expenses for power and the internet connection for the computers, but Mike and Jessica have been carrying these. They aren't in the reports.

The main other point to note in the seven-month report is that $487 dollars is being held for the NZERN branches, and $100 for the Bush Telly. (These largely came from unusual income from a charge for services to Landcare.) $93 is also being held for Nursery Support, which is a Christchurch project.

Untagged funds, that is, the accumulated operation surplus, rose from $386 in April last year to $591 at the end of March this year. At the end of October it had dropped to a deficit of $261, allowing for approximately $4,000 of computer equipment on order. As I mentioned, the $4,000 may be cut back.