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• What does having valuation dates accomplish?
• When (and how often) should valuation dates be?

Valuations are necessary to establish the unit values which each month's club deposits buy, and to set the unit value withdrawals will be based on (and, thus, the dollar value of those withdrawals).  The exact date is not that important, but it should be consistent, and fall between each deposit time.  Withdrawals in general are based on the next valuation following the receipt of the withdrawal request.  The idea behind that was to avoid withdrawing partners using a sort of market timing of their withdrawals.

Many clubs find it expedient to designate the last day of the month as the official valuation date, to aid in reconciling club reports with their bank/broker statements.  This is not at all necessary, as the books can be reconciled with the brokers statement without coinciding with a valuation date.  Others make the valuation date just prior to (or even the same as) their scheduled monthly meeting date, so the unit values for the payments made at or within a day or so of the meeting date are more current.

The most important thing, as stated above, is to select valuation dates consistently, and to be sure there is a valuation corresponding to each club meeting.  In NOCA or NCA, you can audit for this from the drop-down menu on the screen requesting the statement.  Bivio most likely has a similar checkpoint. 

All club accounting software requires that the treasurer take some sort of action to identify each valuation date.  In some software this is accomplished by manually "saving" each valuation date; the valuation date associated with a specific member deposit or withdrawal transaction is then inferred by the software (i.e., the most recent valuation preceeding the transaction).  In other software, a valuation date is identified explicitly as part of the member deposit or withdrawal transaction.  It's important that the treasurer understand and follow the appropriate procedure for the software they're using.