Beginning of description of VIK

In reporting financial statements, all sources of income must be listed in their various forms: cash and physical goods. Cash is easy to report, as it is clearly visible within bank accounts. Bank statements can be requested at a moment's notice to examine bank account details, including usage activity and current balances. Physical goods must also be tracked and recorded according to their fair market values, in order to properly account for depreciation and such.There is far more difficulty in recording the donation of physical goods on financial statements than in recording income or even donated money. The USAP organization was funded by donations from private sponsors, including city and state governments, a university, but mostly corporations. Some of them donated physical goods in return for certain sponsorship or advertising rights and privileges.

These donated items, called Value in Kind (VIK) goods, are promised at varying amounts inside various contracts. the amount of delivered or purchased goods must be recorded on income statements and backed up with data and records proving the receipt and purpose of usage. This can present a problem if an organization has a time constraint and has no unified, streamlined system of information. A problem I have encountered is that during its infancy, the USAP staff was so busy with quickly constructing the pavilion building that they lost certain documents showing exact records of receipts, so recording proper values for the donated VIK goods was impossible. That's when I started my internship.

The VIK goods are holding us together, cleaning our things, transporting our people, lighting our paths, computing our numbers, operating our systems, heating our coffee, and so on. I must track these items with supporting documentation to show: receipt of the goods, market value of the goods, and information about its current usage. The reason for assembling all of the data and processing it according to the contracts is to properly record and report the value of our pavilion, and in the even of an audit, questions about these items could be easily answered.