Apr - Sevenoaks & District Motor Club

Starting with the Sevenoaks accounts, our income section shows a small decrease in event income which is
however more than offset by a welcome increase in membership numbers of nearly 15%.
The expense of putting on these events has increased but this does include some items such as wallets for
membership cards and a better projector and sound system for our social events, as you will have witnessed
at the Awards dinner. Overall the events apart from the first North Weald Sprint and the expected loss on
the Summer Autotest Series, do pay for themselves as you can see from the gross profit of nearly £4000,
not forgetting the bank interest which has rocketted from £12 to £20 !
This gross profit then has to go to on cover all the items of expenditure and this year unfortunately it was
unable to do so. As you can see most of the figures are as close to last year's as you could reasonably
expect, with the majority of the small differences resulting simply from the timing of the invoices, some falling
in this year and some in the next. There is however one exception which stands out and that is the cost of
producing the Acorn. Part of the increased cost as compared to last year, can presumably be attributed to
not only the increase in membership referred to earlier and the price increase from the printers, but also the
increase in the average size - carefully monitored I might add so as not to increase the postage cost to those
who do not yet have the 'electronic' version.
This however does not totally explain the difference so I examined the records for 2010 in detail, only to
discover that we were only charged for printing five editions of Acorn. This may have been because some
editions did not appear, although I don't recall that happening, or because the printers for reasons known
only to themselves, simply omitted to charge us Whatever the reason, the figure shown this year is the
correct one.
One new figure to appear this year comes as a result of the bank deciding to levy charges, despite the size
of our deposit with them and this neatly negates the interest they apply, and more.
Partly as a result of this, our banking is now online, thus avoiding some of the obvious charges for issuing
and accepting cheques and we will be looking closely at online payments for events, providing it proves to
be cost-effective.
With these figures, combined with the reallocation of the MSA grant mentioned earlier this leaves us with a
deficit of £1420.
Motorsport at the Palace
Moving on to the Motorsport at the Palace Ltd. accounts, the Crystal Palace sprint weekend was again
judged to be a success, with mostly fine weather contributing to a slightly larger attendance than the previous
year.
This, plus an increase in the number of trade stands, the invaluable help from our sponsors/advertisers,
commission from the food organisers and of course the MSA grant, helped the total income to a figure of
£94,937, a 1.1% increase on 2010.
The ticket and programme sales would actually be some £3,500 higher but for the amount of partially exempted
tax due on the 2010 entries which is not known until the following year.This arrangement allows a
certain amount of the 20% VAT from each entry to be retained by the club, but only once the turnover for
the whole year is known.
It therefore runs one year in arrears and the 2010 figure was understated by that amount, as there hadn't
been a previous year.
A similar amount is now on the event budget for 2011, to be paid this year !
As you will see the total expenses this year amounted to £77214, a decrease on last year of some £8000,
due mainly to not having to engage in any major resurfacing works. Unfortunately this cannot be guaranteed
to happen every year so again we have a figure in the budget to allow for this contingency, all of which
rather depends on the severity of the winter frosts.
There is also the rather obvious fact to be considered that generally costs tend to move in an upwardly direction!
Just to remind you, this is a public event, so in addition to the costs we are more familiar with such as
awards, scrutineers, timekeepers etc. we have the costs associated with having the public involved, such as
temporary fencing, portacabins, toilet facilities, medical staff, security and of course those costs incurred in
complying with the many and various Health and Safety issues, which as a matter of interest include having
to formulate plans for a mass evacuation should it prove necessary and also provision for an air ambulance
landing area!
For this, and other matters such as ticket design, coping with sponsors etc., in which we are relatively inexperienced
we had to rely on specialist skills, which of course all come at a price.
It may help if I run through the larger items of expense to give you an idea of what is involved.
We tried, not altogether successfully, to try and differentiate between the expenses related to the 'public' and
'event' sides but inevitably there is a lot of 'crossover' involved.
The 'Hire of Plant & Machinery' and the 'Event equipment hire' categories which include the temporary fencing,
portacabins, marquee, toilet facilities, waste bins and the Armco installation could really be amalgamated
as they do really relate to very similar things, and unsurprisingly they are very similar, in total, to last
year.