2016 Finance Subcommittee

Date: Tuesday 2nd week, Trinity 2016 (2016-05-03)

Present: Anne Williamson (President), Cealach McKeating (Vice-President (Administrative)), Steven Rose (Secretary), Darryl Braier-Lorimer (Treasurer), Hugo Monnery (Lindsay), Frederick Potts (Foody), Zachary Leather (Foody)

Agenda

1. Matters arising

2. Treasurer's report [Darryl]

3. Bar report [Hugo]

4. Foody's report [Zack & Freddy]

5. AOB

Minutes

Cealach welcomed the meeting.

 

1. Treasurer

 

Darryl reported to Fexec that he had found yet another hole in the accounting of the previous year; he told Fexec that the monthly Pantry wage had been calculated by subtracting two staff members' wage, however at least one staff member is paid monthly, and that the termly wage had been subtracted instead of the monthly wages for each month. As a result, Michaelmas term looked somewhat woeful, despite usually being profitable. He reported that the hole was of approximately £500. He reported that he had corrected everything as far as he could, leading to provisional figures that revised the £7,000 loss in Michaelmas to a £3319 loss. His revised (and incredibly provisional) Hilary term figures suggested that Pantry made a £1372.89 loss (which he reported is a good figure for Pantry; despite being a slightly greater loss than in previous Hilary terms, the figure was acceptable given the performance of Pantry the previous term).

“Pantry's done okay.” He reported that the bar had made a £3355 profit in Hilary; an exceptional figure that warranted the commending of Hugo's efforts, who summarily commended the efforts of his predecessor, Richard. Despite the figures being provisional, Darryl told Fexec that this suggested the highest profit on record (which include the figures of the last three years).

It was reported that Entz had made a £1669 profit (which, upon prompting from Annie, Darryl informed us came from the sale of boptails; he took the opportunity to remind Fexec that the figures for Entz are somewhat distorted by the fact that a loss is made in the purchase of events tickets in Michaelmas term, which are only paid for through Battels in Hilary). This was in line with Hilary term of a couple of years ago, and smaller than previous years, which he speculated was due to greater expenditure on bops.

It was reported that the JCR Miscellanious loss was £2217 (however it was noted that this sum was provisional).

Overall, this amounted to a JCR profit of £2435.10, that was offset by the unexpected expenditure of £4000 in the previous term. It was agreed that this was in line with moral reasoning that the money made should be only slightly greater than the money paid into the JCR by students for the purpose of sustainability.

Darryl then suggested that the Foodys reworked the Pantry Battels system. He noted that currently, Pantry was receiving £1000 less from Battels than appears in pantry accounts. He speculated that this was due to people's stupid names on Pantry system. A potential solution suggested was to star unknown names to identify later. Darryl responded that the numbers are given to Denise end of 9th week, when students were not available. Annie suggested that the Foodys focus on identifying the twenty highest spending unidentified members in order to maximise the profit made without expending disproportionate effort. Cealach suggested instructing students working the till at Pantry re-enter students' proper names should they come across a stupid name.

 

 

2. Bar

Hugo reported that Trinity terms are quieter than other terms. He noted that the recently held quiz night had been quite full, but that a bar-owned cooler had broken.

The idea of a Rhinoceros after-party was suggested; Hugo agreed that this was a good idea. A playlliol after-party was subsequently suggested. It was noted that there were Saturday shows at the Pilch each week, and that after-parties were a possible avenue for upping bar traffic on Saturdays.

It was asked if there would be more pub quizzes, Hugo replied that there would be pub quizzes organised by the bar social secretaries.

Darryl noted that he had noticed that there were more 3rd years in the bar than other groups, and suggested targeting 2nd years as 1st years as 3rd will drain from the bar closer to finals.

Darryl noted that figures showed that the wages of bar staff were a low proportion of bar costs, and that stock spending doesn't change from Hilary to Trinity. He asked that given that takings are lower, should – and can – the bar be spending less on stock in Trinity? Hugo replied that the purchase of Balliale had distorted the spending on stock, however in general, he had no idea what cause of this is. He floated the idea that events like Summer Eights and June Jamboree – in which things don't take in much profit – contributed to this, but agreed that probably not as much stuff needs to be ordered, noting however that it was hard to tell without seeing specific examples.

Numbers were fine.

 

 

3. Pantry

Zack reported that financially, the first two weeks of term had been okay; there had been a £400 loss in 0th week and a taking of £1100 from 4 days (which, for context, is good); the takings of 1st week were roughly £1800 takings (noting that only one shift had not been staffed), and that Pantry had spent £2100. He told Fexec that the loss was predictable and not troubling, since food expenditure declines over term. He did however suggest that a revenue of £1800 each week was not sufficient to cover the costs over the eight weeks, suggesting that Pantry would be breaking even with a revenue of £1950-£2000, without permanent staff, and hence Pantry would like to find another £150-£200 of weekly revenue. He offered the opinion that hiring a permanent member of staff was a bad idea at the moment, as this would only imply that Pantry was open one extra hour a day, which would not bring in enough revenue to justify the cost. Darryl offered that this hour would be 11.30 til 12.30, which is profitable hour. Zack however countered that he believes that the revenue would be shifted revenue rather than additional revenue, although Darryl thinks that most of the revenue of this time would be generated from students ordering a late breakfast. Freddy replied that typically late breakfasts are ordered during the lunch shift anyway. Regardless, Zack told Fexec that he doesn't think the extra revenue would raise revenue by £300 weekly (which would be required for the extra £150-£200, plus the cost of the permanent member of staff).

It was suggested that the main opportunity for finding this revenue would be in Michaelmas term, and hence there would be a strong push in Michaelmas to make sure Pantry would be open to bring in freshers (noting that the proportion of freshers currently low). It was suggested that this was an aspect of a wider phenomenon of low fresher involvement in JCR activities and institutions generally, however it was countered that this was a perception shared year-in-year-out regarding new cohorts of freshers. It was agreed that there would be room for improvement with the new cohort of freshers coming in Michaelmas. Fexec were told that there would hopefully be a large meal (as in some sort of welcome dinner) at some point during lunch time in Freshers week to make freshers particularly aware of Pantry. It was noted that the perception of Pantry as unreliable would not follow Pantry into Michaelmas term, which will work in its favour in attracting freshers.

It was reported that staffing had been very positive over the last two weeks; Foodys have had to fill less shifts than is typical. It was suggested that the Foodys should be plugging back shifts more, through a greater number of emails (potentially colourful emails).