So no one would literally work for DVC. To be an employer, you need to be a legal entity. Those whose primary function is to serve DVC probably just get labeled/titled that.
From a legal standpoint, they would either be employees of DVCMC or DVD, or employees of one of the other Disney entities that would then charge either DVCMC or DVD for their services.
Dues from DVC members go into the resort owners condominium associations. DVCMC then bills those associations for the services provided. The services DVCMC provides are outlined in this document.
How DVCMC resources providing those services (from in-house staff or subcontracting from DVD or other Disney entities) is probably not specified in the contract between the associations and DVCMC. So your dues don’t literally pay anyone. They pay for services proper for DVCMC to provide to the resort owners condominium associations so those associations can fulfill their role as described in that same document.
In order to preserve the independence of the resort owners condominium associations, the contract with DVCMC should be written at a going market rate of charges and agreed to by DVD acting as the representative of each association.
(Perhaps a simpler example. Our homeowners association has no employees. We hire an outside property management company to do all the admin work. They have 2 staff on-site dedicated to us. They “work” for us but are really employees of the property management company. Our contract describes the services to be provided at a rate we agreed to after shopping around.)
Since DVD is the one selling the contracts, that’s where all costs related to that function would be recorded. It could literally be people that work for DVD or people that work for another Disney entity that bills DVD. These people might also be labeled/titled as working “for” DVC because that’s their function, but DVC is not their literal employer.
I think you’re trying to equate the layoffs to cash-on-hand issues at either the associations or DVCMC or DVD, and I don’t think that’s how it works at all. Disney will make sure the associations get the services they’ve contracted with DVCMC for, one way or another. (If significant numbers of DVC members stop paying dues due to a recession and the associations get precarious, that’s a totally different discussion, and not a pretty one.)
If DVCMC or DVD were short on cash, Disney Parks could simply send them cash as a capital injection. (Cash to DVCMC would flow through DVD first.)
The layoffs are part of a bigger belt-tightening at Disney. I haven’t read any of the detail to see how much of their reasoning they’ve disclosed. It’s likely not based on short term cash flow at individual legal entities, but Disney-wide cash flow and how much headcount they feel they need to fulfill required functions. And they could be using seniority or other factors regardless of legal entity or project assignment and then they’ll consolidate functions and bill internally for those providing services to other entities.
So I think this isn’t really relevant to what you were trying to figure out with cash flow and layoffs but here’s the answer. For points owned by DVD, they would definitely record revenue from those points being used for cash reservations. That would give them a receivable due from whoever actually received the cash, I’m assuming WDPR.
There are numerous ways to settle that receivable. A literal cash payment would be one. But they could also be netting all transactions that occur between DVD and WDPR for the month (or quarter, or even year) and just settle up the total. Or they could just periodically record capital transactions with Disney Parks as their mutual parent to settle up in total. There are numerous other ways they could be doing it too, depending on what they are trying to accomplish at a legal entity level (tax consequences of differing methods can be a significant factor). They just need to record the transactions in a proper manner.
I think there would be a similar process for breakage income for cash reservations of unused DVC declared units, except that would also involve a payable to the associations for their share up to the 2.5% cap. I don’t know if the associations literally have their own bank accounts or if they just have an operating line of credit with Disney. I’ve only seen the budgets for the associations. It would seem there would be financials shared with members?
I’m not sure who at Disney records the revenue from breakage income over the 2.5% cap, likely either DVD or DVCMC.