.
The museum follows the fund accounting method for financial statement presentation purposes. This choice was adopted in order to provide greater insight to the financial statements users. Most of the financial statements are presented separately for each fund: the general fund, the capital asset fund and the acquisition fund. Resources and contributions are allocated to funds in accordance with their specified purpose. The General Fund illustrates the resources available and used for day-to-day operations, the Capital Assets Fund reports transactions related to capital assets and the Acquisition Fund reveals the resources set aside to grow the museum's collection.
Another choice the museum made was to account for contributions using the deferral method. Under the deferral method, contributions externally restricted to future period expenses are deferred and recognized as revenue in the period in which the related expenses are incurred. Deferred contributions are therefore assigned to the appropriate fund, based on the nature of the future expenses they are meant to finance.
Notes to the Financial Statements.
The purpose of the notes to the financial statements is to provide additional information to the reader. Given that the organization is a museum and a non-for-profit organization, the following notes retained our attention more than the others.
Related Organizations and Transactions.
The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts Foundation is considered, for accounting purposes, to be a related organization, as certain members of the Museum's Board of Trustees are members of the Board of Trustees of the Foundation. The Foundation is a registered charity that is mainly involved in receiving donations and other contributions on behalf of the Museum and administering its funds. The transactions between the two organizations are made in the normal course of operations and are recorded at the exchange amount.