Kurt Aichele Interview Posted

[Craig]

Posted to the front page at Fencing.Net:

Interview with US Fencing Executive Director Kurt Aichele

Serge Timacheff (FencingPhotos.com) interviewed him while at the Junior Olympics. Full transcript is available as the audio uploads.

Discuss the interview here.

Craig

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Craig Harkins
Fencing.Net
http://www.fencing.net/

[Craig]

Wow. No comments on this at all?

[griffindm]

I'm a little disturbed that he seems to be put off a bit by actually trying the sport. I know some people have a mental block about being poked by metal rods, but he should have known someone was going to ask about this.

[Capt. Slo-mo]

Well, I did find this part interesting:

Kurt Aichele: "...it was a better year than the year prior, which is good. Honestly, the treasurer of the organization, we estimate that – Greg Dilworth is our treasurer, estimates that our actual cash loss was about 180,000. From an actual perspective, in terms of the way it looks in the books, it’s different; however, that truly is our loss for last year.

Other stuff that came in was stuff that was – should have been actually deferred to other years. We also wrote off a lot of debt that really we see as uncollectable.

Unfortunately, from many individuals’ organizations that were closely tied to the Federation, that truly is just uncollectable. And part of that maybe be as a result of the economic situation we find ourselves in globally."

1. What happened to the 1.8 million dollar shortfall that gets frequently mentioned here?

2. Uncollectable? What kind of receivables would be uncollectable in such large amounts?

[Mr.MightyMouse]

IMHO - he does "corporate 101 correct statement" to the best of his ability.

[Allen Evans]

1. "Budget" shortfalls don't always materialize as cash shortfalls.

2. Without looking at the 990 or other document it would be hard to say. It could be that pledged donations (cash or in kind) that were booked as recievables did not come through, and had to be "written off". This is just a guess.

AE

[Mr.MightyMouse]

2. Uncollectable? What kind of receivables would be uncollectable in such large amounts?

Bankruptcy would warrant full recovery impossible.

[brtech]

If you have been around accountants or accounting, you know the difference between "book" and "cash". The "book" loss was large ($1.8M was the original number, I don't know if that's accurate). The "cash" loss is the actual cash difference between the beginning of the year and the end of the year and was much lower (less than $200K).

Whenever you have a loss, accountant's usually use the loss as a good excuse to clean up past mistakes. That appears to be what is happening now: we're wiping uncollectible receivables off the books, etc. As an example, consider a vendor who attended a NAC, who owes us money, but the vendor is now out of business, or would be if we collected. We might zero out what was originally an asset (accounts receivable). That would increase the size of the book loss, without affecting cash.

The book loss is important; it's what we report to everyone, including our membership and USOC. The cash loss is what hits us immediately; our bank balance is less than it was when we started the year.

Fixing back problems, like uncollectible receivables, is a really good thing, and I want Greg et al to do that, even if it makes the book loss higher. What I am concerned about is the future loss issues. Some of the book loss problems are in the future (we will have to pay someone for something this year or next year, and we don't expect the corresponding income to cover it). I surely want to know how we're going to deal with them. I hear we expect to come out in the black this year. That's good. I know we now expect that we won't recover as much ground as we originally had hoped due to the economy. That is to be expected. I want to hear (and read in the reports), that we can continue to operate in the black for the foreseeable future and that our book loss issues will be resolved in a reasonable time.

[heretic]

What is the extent of the USFA's outstanding accounts payable?