Cerebus Archive Number One: Income & Expense Report

(Click image to enlarge)

JOHN FUNK:

Now that all of the reward packages have been shipped out, I want to share the financial results for CANO with all of you. There are still some shipping invoices that haven't arrived yet, but they have been estimated in the Actual plus Forecast column.

If you're not familiar with financial reporting (or if your eyes glaze over at the sight of columns and rows of numbers), then this written summary will be of interest. However, if you have any questions at all about these financials or this report, please don't hesitate to e-mail them to me either via the Kickstarter message system or at: cerebusarchive [at] geps [dot] ca.

There are four sections to this summary report: i) Pledges, ii) Reward Make & Ship Expenses, iii) Management Fee, and iv) Cerebus Restoration Expenses.

i) Pledges:

$33,023 was pledged and after deductions for Kickstarter fees and the credit card company fees, we had $30,324.84 remaining.

ii) Reward Make & Ship Expenses:

These are the costs for producing and shipping your rewards. The total expense is projected at $14,366.90 which is $3,276.80 higher than what we had budgeted on back in April, when planning out the campaign. The following activities caused this to go over budget: a) in order to get better price points, we purchased additional Cerebus foil labels and extra stay-flats to take us into the next campaign, and b) the packaging that we planned on did not stand up to testing. Therefore, we had to reinvent the packaging on the fly which had more cardboard components and therefore required much more labour to assemble it. This made for a larger size and caused an increase in shipping expense for some regions. The cost of bulk shipping the USA packages to Escape Pod Comics was more expensive than we had thought it would be.

iii) Management Fee:

This is the compensation to me for my time and effort spent managing the campaign, from the initial project write-up and submission, to recording reservation numbers, e-mail follow-up, setting up and recording the survey results, assigning the 'lowest hold' reservation numbers, deleting non-pledged reservation numbers, creating and testing the packaging, posting updates and many more numerous activities. The 90/10 split was agreed upon at the start. The 90% that goes to Dave Sim, is shown on the final section:

iv) Cerebus Restoration Expenses:

This section shows the amount of money that was spent on the actual project goals (pay for the first printing which did not turn out to expectation for Cerebus and High Society, and the subsequent scanning and restoration work that Sean Robinson is doing). As you can see, of the available $14,362.15 the restoration expenses have already consumed all of that and more. In fact, to date, restoration expenses have exceeded the $14k amount by $22,607.33. Which means that we need to continue with Cerebus Archive Number Two, Three, Four, and so on in order to keep the restoration activity going.

I'm confident that as we move forward with the next campaign, we will get better, faster and more efficient at what we're doing, both time wise and expenditure wise.

As part of public accountability for this project, Dave has directed me to scan and make available to view all of the individual expenses and invoices related to this project. I've placed everything in a folder called Invoices at this Drop-Box location. There is also a folder with pictures of the packaging and of the stacks of packages before they were shipped out.

Again, please don't hesitate to send me an e-mail with your questions regarding this report and the project expenses.

Sincerely,

John Funk (on behalf of Dave Sim)
cerebusarchive [at] geps [dot] ca