What Is the USFRC for Clubs?

The USFRC — the Uniform System of Financial Reporting for Clubs — is the industry-standard framework for club accounting and financial statements. Published by Hospitality Financial and Technology Professionals (HFTP) in collaboration with the Club Managers Association of America (CMAA), it gives clubs a common chart of accounts, a common set of operating departments, and common layouts for financial statements and supporting schedules, so that a club's results can be read consistently by its board and compared with other clubs.

What it standardizes

The book covers far more than a list of accounts. In summary, it sets out:

• A chart of accounts — a numbering scheme for assets, liabilities, members' equity, revenue and expense accounts, designed so every club classifies the same transaction the same way.
• Departments — revenue-producing departments such as food, beverage, golf operations, the golf shop, racquet sports and aquatics; golf course maintenance as a cost center; and undistributed departments such as administrative and general, clubhouse, and facility maintenance and energy.
• Departmental statements — a schedule for each department showing its revenue, cost of sales, payroll and other expenses, so each can be judged on its own.
• Summary statements — a statement of activities that presents operating results separately from capital income such as initiation fees and capital assessments, plus a balance sheet and cash flow statement.
• Guidance — definitions for line items, an expense dictionary and material on analysis, budgeting and tax matters for clubs.

It addresses country clubs and city clubs, and its latest editions also address clubs within residential communities. The book itself is copyrighted and available from HFTP and CMAA.

How clubs use it

A controller uses the USFRC to build or restructure the club's general ledger: account numbers follow its scheme, every revenue and expense account is tagged to a department, and monthly board reports follow its departmental layout. Because many clubs follow the same structure, industry benchmarking studies can compare, for example, food and beverage payroll as a percentage of F&B revenue across clubs.

Example

A member's lunch is recorded as revenue in the food department, with the related cost of sales and server payroll in the same department. The board's monthly package shows the food department's schedule — revenue, cost of sales, payroll, other expenses and departmental net — next to golf operations and the other departments, then rolls up to the statement of activities, where capital income is kept apart.

Why it matters at a private club

Boards change every year, and controllers move between clubs. A standard structure means a new treasurer or controller can read the club's financials without a translation guide, and the club can judge its results against peers. Clubs that build their chart ad hoc usually find, years later, that they cannot answer simple comparative questions without re-classifying history.

Related terms

• General ledger
• Unrelated business income
• Capital assessment

For a practitioner's walkthrough, see the USFRC guide and the country club chart of accounts guide.

In Bubs: the club ledger ships with a USFRC-aligned chart of accounts, carries department as a dimension on every line, and produces departmental statements in the USFRC layout. See club accounting.