Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Please record ALL transactions. Here's why:

Recently a number of Time Traders have recorded multiple transactions that took place over a month or two in one day.

This doesn't seem like a big deal, but it is. Why?

Because Time Trader is dependent on those numbers, and it helps that they are recorded in a timely fashion.

Each month, around the 8th, I sit down and run a report in Community Weaver. The report details the transactions for the previous month. Every TD$ exchanged is recorded, along with the people or groups involved in the transaction. The numbers are then entered into a spreadsheet and provided to my supervisors at Family Service Rochester and, ultimately, the Board of Directors.

The numbers tell the board how many new members have joined Time Trader. Board members can see not only how many TD$ were exchanged in transactions, but how many people participated in a transaction that month. They can see how many transactions involved Family Service Rochester, FSR Meals on Wheels, or FSR Right at Home Solutions. They also can see how Time Trader builds community by bringing together people who need services (like Meals on Wheels) and people who can provide those services.

In the future, we hope to use those reports and the numbers in them to help us demonstrate growth in the program, to show the impact Time Trader has had on programs FSR runs, and possibly in grant applications.

If you have transactions to record, it's ok to record them all at once; just be sure to record each individual transaction (not 8 TD$ for a "miscellaneous" transaction, but 2TD$ for gardening and 6TD$ for home organizing, for example), and try to have them recorded by the 7th of the following month.

And if you have developed a friendship or relationship with someone through Time Trader and you used to record TD$ but now you just watch each other's children or do mending for each other informally, it is still important to record those transactions. While it is wonderful that we have friendships which have grown out of Time Trader, it is ultimately the numbers that tell our story, and the numbers which can help us grow and flourish as a community.