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Originally Posted by RoboMom
Get in the habit of keeping track of all your expenses. Have a business manager. Keep an excel file. You will need to present at inspection.
This document can then be used to help with sponsorship. Most sponsors want to know that your team can manage a budget. Some grants will require this. I just met with a group yesterday who is giving some funding to all the Baltimore City teams. But in return, they are requiring detailed accounting. That's how it works.
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Well said, RoboMom! This needs to be spotlighted!
Designing and building a robot with unlimited budget is not realistic. That is why FIRST has cost accounting rules, found in sections 5.3.4.3 and 5.3.4.4 on pages 15 and 16 of the
Robot Rules.
Teams should be aware that the accounting sheet required at inspection covers the cost of items used to build your robot (beyond what was in the KOP) using the methods detailed in the rules referenced above. This is generally not the same as the actual expenses your team incurred. It is a good practice to keep track of both. You need the robot cost accounting sheet at inspection, to show that you complied with the rules. You need to account for your actual costs for many other reasons, including demonstrating to sponsors, judges, mentors, and others that your team can operate within a budget.
__________________
Richard Wallace
Mentor since 2011 for FRC 3620 Average Joes (St. Joseph, Michigan)
Mentor 2002-10 for FRC 931 Perpetual Chaos (St. Louis, Missouri)
since 2003
I believe in intuition and inspiration. Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution. It is, strictly speaking, a real factor in scientific research.
(Cosmic Religion : With Other Opinions and Aphorisms (1931) by Albert Einstein, p. 97)