Presented at the Seattle meeting of the ISPRS council ( 7-9 April, 1997 ).

I. Financial Matters

1. All documents associated with the treasurer duty's were handed over on the 30. September 1996 by the past Treasurer John Trinder to the present Treasurer Heinz Ruether after approval by the past chairman of the financial commission, Keith Atkinson.
2. The Society's assets are held in two accounts, a SFR-regular-account and a SFR-investor's (or bond)- account in a Swiss Bank.
3. Tables showing the financial status of Ordinary, Sustaining and Regional members of the Society are attached, these status reports are based on bank statements received before the 25 March 1997. The majority of the 97 Ordinary members are paid up. Sixteen members are in arrears with overdue payments dating back to 1993 and earlier. Reminders for those in arrears were sent out together with the annual invoices for 1997 membership fees. These invoices were posted at the beginning of March to all paying members.
4. Two ordinary members, Bophuthatswana and Estonia, who discontinued their membership, are not expected to pay arrears and the arrears had to be written off as bad debts. The same applies for two sustaining members, APY and Image Interpretation Systems.
5. The Swiss Bond investments have earned an amount of SFR 17089.60. The UBS was instructed to sell bonds of a value of about SFR 40000 to finance Society activities while awaiting payments of membership dues into the Society's current account. As soon as sufficient funds have been recovered through incoming membership fees, available amounts will be reinvested.
6. The newsletter `Highlights' is published at a cost of US$ 13 000 per issue with a planned edition of four issues per annum. Advertising revenues will reduce the cost of the publications to ISPRS and it is expected that present levels of advertising content will improve with growing industry awareness of the ISPRS publications.
7. The introduction of the ISPRS newsletter 'Highlights' and the ISPRS Web page has resulted in some expenses, which were not anticipated at the time of budget preparation and which were therefore not budgeted for. Among these are unexpected starting-up expenses associated with the first issue.
8. Royalties amounting to SFR 5524.89 have been received from Elsevier.
9. Overall, the financial situation of ISPRS is healthy.

Heinz Ruether
Treasurer