Band Finances
What’s with all the paperwork?
A few reasons, but here are the big ones:
- It helps us keep track of who hired us, to do what, when, for how much, etc. These records have helped with a number of investigations so far, and will probably continue to do so.
- We get a record of who goes out on missions when, so we can get an idea of whether missions are always going to the same people, getting spread around reasonably fairly, etc.
- It helps keep track of how much money came in for the purposes of:
- Calculating band-wide shares
- Paying the band’s taxes to the Réig (10% of almost all income)
We pay taxes?
Yep! Strictly speaking, a tithe. The band has been somewhat accurately described as ‘land privateers’ — we fork up a tenth of our take to the Reig for the privilege. The only exception to this rule is the rare occasion when the client is the Reig themselves. In those cases, there’s no tax.
The tax payment is taken entirely out of the 50% of each contract the band keeps. 20% of that 50%, so 10% of the total, is set aside for the Reig.
Following the first few events, which had a very uneven distribution of income — skewed heavily towards those fighty types who were lucky/cunning enough to be first to sign up for jobs — we instituted a larger cut of each contract for the band.
We use a lot of this cut to pay shares out to each member of the band who attended the event. The amount of these shares is usually related to how much the band earned over the course of the event, though sometimes it gets topped up a little out of reserves if the event was particularly light on coin. Historically shares have been between 25 and 50 pingin.
These shares are intended to compensate for general 'being there' duties like fighting in defence of camp, running out on missions where a random group of people save someone's family/cow/whatever for the six pingin and a bit of string they had in their pocket, participating in rituals (though you might get a bonus if you do that a lot) etc.
Shares are divided up as follows:
- Anyone who set foot on the field: 1 share
- Officers of the band: 1 additional share
- Additional shares are also given to most officers to distribute to those who have assisted in their area:
- The camp, watch, cinire, and wizardry officers each get a similarly sized pool, usually around 5 shares
- The recon officer is given a roughly equivalent sum of money to purchase information, services, or whatever else they require
- The quartermaster usually takes a share or two to pay a deputy and maybe someone who guarded the money, though that’s often covered by the watch officer
- A slightly larger pool is shared between the Thane’s Lt. and Deputy Thane’s Lt. to cover anything not covered in the above
Ok, but how do I get my money?
Your money is always there for you on an account in the band's books. If you have a lot, this is probably a safer place to keep some of it than on your belt.
If you want to get hard cash, this is something that is constantly being improved, but you can currently get pay for a mission at almost (see below) any time after a mission has been completed, the paperwork filled out, and payment received. Those tend to all happen within about five minutes of each other, so it’s usually pretty quickly after the return to camp.
Shares are usually available from late Sunday morning or early Sunday afternoon, as it takes until around then to know how much we’re getting paid overall and to get most of the payments in hand. Then there’s a bit of maths and the shares start going out.
In summary: missions whenever, shares on Sunday. There is an exception to this: Handing out specific payments for missions takes time and requires updating the records of who has taken pay and who is still owed it for a particular job, or set of jobs, and the share distribution tends to cause a queue to form. For the sanity of everyone involved and to avoid a 30 minute queue, once that’s happened you can only collect your share — they’re counted out in advance and the record keeping is just ticking you name off a list.
Why the IC list?
The list has to be collected IC because sharing the OOC sign-in list in any form with the players of the QM, officers, and anyone else who reads the accounts — even in the form of character names — is potentially not on under GDPR, and it’s better to be safe than sorry with these things.
I didn’t get my name on the list
If you notice that within the next event or two, just let the QM know and you’ll be added, trusting in the spirit of the fourth oath to keep you from scamming us. The list gets posted to the discord (the player of the QM is not an organisation and therefore not bound by GDPR) for people to review and add their characters’ names to if required.
If it’s years later, that’s probably just hard luck — we can’t be in a position where there might be hundreds of pingin the band owes but we don’t know about.
I need money from my account to buy something in downtime
The band keeps a small amount of money in the downtime system (so we don't make the team count too many coins). This should usually be enough to cover a few transfers out of character accounts, if you contact the quartermaster and ask for them.
Large transfers, or transfers once the pool of money has run out, can still be handled by moving money between characters' IC accounts.
What happens to the rest of the money?
A variety of things:
- Some is used to commission or buy information and items on behalf of the band
- Some is used to top up the shares in the event things are lean
- Some is kept set aside for emergencies
- Some is kept set aside for Bruid
Is there an audit of the books?
Thus far there has been an internal audit, and there has also been an audit conducted by the Reig's Reckoners. Neither found any issues with the book keeping. The Reckoners had some questions about the band's general conduct. The quartermaster, having been appropriately mushroomed on certain endeavours, was unable to assist them with most of these.
You can ask for details on your own account whenever you like. Details of others' accounts are private without sufficient authority.