ePlaya

I'm facilitating the oversight of 15 - 20 person camp this year. Does anyone have recommendations for how to manage camp dues? Handy free applications, spreadsheet structure, etc. I love organization so any help would be greatly appreciated.

I have zero theme camp help to offer you, but can I just say that as a real-life Project Manager in the default world, I was SUPER hoping to hear that your camp was called "Camp Budget Management" and that this post was about your plans to skewer/mock/burnify the corporate PM culture?

Our hope is to be placed and our we're calling ourselves the "Department of Peace."

You'll get placed next to a sound camp.

We do most of that on our camp website.

Your camp is small. Collect your dues in cash, keep notes in a notebook. Reimburse only pre-approved expenditures upon submission of a receipt, and hold back a couple hundred dollars for the every end, or else YOU are going to personally pay for things like a run to the dump and gas for the generator.

I do everything in excel. Family budget, vehicle cost tracking, burning man cost tracking, camp planning. Excel is awesome.

So, lets nerd out a bit...

I would create a spreadsheet with every expense you think you might incur, and those you have already paid and list them in the A column
Enter or estimate all of the costs and put those next to each item in the B column.
In C1 enter =sum(B1:B50) assuming you have 50 costs in your sheet, adjust accordingly.
In C2 enter =C1*.01 This will allow you a 10% buffer, adjust for comfortable buffer
In C3 enter =sum(C1:C2) - Total expenses plus 10%
In D1 enter the number of campers you will have
In C4 enter =C3/D1 - This will give you the total needed from each camper.

Collect said amount (paypal, venmo, chase quick pay its 2017 dog) - Collect the same amount from everyone no matter how many you have from this point forward

Then as you pay the expenses replace the estimate with the actual cost

As you add more campers modify the number in D1 to redo the math.

After all is done, and you are sure all expenses are paid take the total you collected - the actual cost / number of campers and issue refunds (or collect that amount). (pay pal etc. again)

We could really go crazy and start to account for other people incurring the expenses and adjusting their refund amount..... (*attempts to hide excel erection)...

Was that too much? I could build this in about 30 minutes if you are interested.

Okay so I built it anyway... it would look something like this.

I would clean it up with headers and labels and such but this give you the general idea.

I also added in other people covering expenses and how that would adjust their total due. This is assuming that you include their costs in the B column as if it was your own.

$955 for hand sanitizer? Remind me not to eat anything offered to me at your camp.

Only $50 for coffee? Heathens.

AntiM wrote:Only $50 for coffee? Heathens.

With $777 flip flops.... choices had to be made.

Man some of you new burners really know how to take all the fun out of it and make it a big mess.

I want to know more about this "Butt Tape" you have $125 reserved for ...

Token wrote:I want to know more about this "Butt Tape" you have $125 reserved for ...

Camp Butt Management!!!

Dear OP. Thread drift happens often here.

If I was doing this, I'd do Google Sheets or similar plus PayPal.

It establishes a record.

I would also get your 15 - 20 folks all lined up, tell them to pay up by a particular date, say June 15th, or be banished.

Then and only then, when you have the money from everyone, should you consider covering expenses from that coffer. Nothing sucks worse when you spend for 20 people but only 10 show up and pay dues.

And also set rules that there are no refunds after a certain date, say July 1st. Money gets spent based on earlier commitments. You cannot un-spend so no refunds after some small time window. Its a "piss or get off the pot" kind of thing.

This is why I never did any kind of camp dues. Too much drama, too many people flake.

We use PayPal and Google Sheets. A simple spreadsheet for incoming monies, outgoing payments, and shopping lists. We can keep track of signups, who has paid and who hasn't, and a host of other things. This is for a camp of about 50 to 75 people.

Oh my god that spreadsheet is awful. Listen, here's my best piece of advice about running a small camp like yours: don't let too many people make the decisions. I know, I know. "Radical Inclusion", "Communal Effort" or whatever. But the truth is, you have fifteen people camping with you, ten of whom will materially contribute, two or three of whom should be making decisions and tracking the expenditures.

If you start having shareable spreadsheets, you WILL start getting shared opinions. And likely, that will be fifteen different and competing opinions.

My advice - let the group make the BIG idea decisions (we're going to have a sound system and a bar) and let the two or three camp leads make the spending decisions ($100 to buy some used speakers, $50 for lumber to build the bar, $20 for paint, $150 for booze, mixers, and ice, $100 for the gas to drive the things there, $50 to dispose of the garbage at the end).

Keep your notes in a notebook and don't let anyone outside the leadership see them. You will save yourself a world of headache.

Haters...

Chowski wrote:...Keep your notes in a notebook and don't let anyone outside the leadership see them. You will save yourself a world of headache.

This guy speaks truth

I keep track of everything in a pretty simple Excel spreadsheet, including arrival dates, EA passes (or whatever they're going to be called now), vehicle sizes, tent space needed, etc. There's a column for $$. I started buying crap for this year's event months ago. I'm pretty sure I never make any money on Burning Man and our financial side is simple. Give me money. I spend money. Nobody has ever asked for an accounting before, but given what we have tied up in all of the stuff... it all seems to work out. We set an arbitrary dollar amount due from everyone. A purchase of something can be substituted or used towards that amount. Some folks kick way more serious butt than others with tasks and I am open to negotiation with them. A few folks have no real intention of paying or will only pay if pressured heavily: let's call that "legacy entitlement". Never really had anyone balk at the cost before. No shit, this stuff isn't free.

My point: don't turn this into some mind-numbing exercise in economics. It's just a camping trip in the desert.