The treasurer's guide: bookkeeping for clubs, charities and societies

Nobody becomes a treasurer because they love bookkeeping. You become one because the last treasurer moved away, the club needs someone, and you're the one who "is good with spreadsheets". What you inherit is usually a bank account, a spreadsheet of uncertain lineage, a carrier bag of receipts, and an AGM in eleven months at which you'll have to present accounts. Here's a system that makes that presentation an afternoon's work, built on the one record the organisation already has: its bank statement.

The principle: the bank statement is the ledger

For a small club or charity, almost every pound that moves goes through the bank account. Subscriptions come in by standing order, the hall hire goes out by transfer, the insurance by direct debit. Cash — the tuck shop float, the raffle — is a rounding error, and it's banked. That means the bank statement, converted to a spreadsheet and categorised, is the accounts. Everything else in this article is refinement.

The working rule that follows: one bank account, used for nothing else, with every transaction categorised quarterly. If there's a second account for reserves or a deposit account for the roof fund, it's categorised the same way.

Quarterly, not annually

Once a quarter, download the statements and convert them to a spreadsheet. Typing them is where volunteer treasurers lose evenings and make the errors that surface at the AGM; NoRekey converts a statement in seconds, checks the result against the statement's own opening and closing balances so you know it's complete, and the free plan's ten pages a month is more than most clubs generate. Paper statements from the bank that still posts them can be photographed and converted the same way.

Then add a category column and work down it. A quarter of a small organisation is a couple of hundred rows; categorised by payee, it's an hour. Four of those a year and the AGM accounts are a pivot table.

The headings

Most small organisations present receipts and payments accounts — what came in, what went out, what's left — rather than accruals accounts, and the headings should be the ones your members recognise. A typical set:

Receipts: subscriptions and membership; donations; grants; fundraising events (by event); bar, tuck shop or café; Gift Aid reclaimed; bank interest; other.

Payments: premises and hall hire; insurance; equipment and kit; affiliation and licence fees; coaching, referees and sessional staff; events and fundraising costs; printing, post and website; bank charges; other.

Keep the list short enough that every committee member understands it, and stable from year to year so the comparison column means something. If a category reads "other" for more than a few hundred pounds, split it.

Restricted funds

A grant "for the junior section", a donation "towards the new minibus", a collection "for the roof": that money is restricted, it can only be spent on the thing it was given for, and the accounts must show it separately from the general fund. Tag restricted receipts and their matching payments with the fund name as well as the category. At year-end, each restricted fund shows what came in, what was spent on it, and what's carried forward — and the general fund shows everything else. Mixing them is the most common thing an examiner picks up, and the easiest to avoid with one extra column.

Gift Aid

If the organisation is a registered charity or a community amateur sports club, donations from UK taxpayers can be grossed up by 25% through Gift Aid. The bookkeeping is: keep every declaration, tag each eligible donation in the spreadsheet, and claim — online, as often as you like, up to four years back. A treasurer who tags donations as they arrive can claim in ten minutes; one who doesn't reconstructs a year of standing orders in a weekend. The claim arrives as a single bank receipt, which goes under its own heading.

The thresholds

For charities in England and Wales, the external scrutiny required depends on gross income for the year:

Receipts and payments accounts are acceptable for non-company charities under £250,000 of income; above that, accruals accounts are needed. Registration with the Charity Commission is required above £5,000 of income (and always for a CIO), and an annual return above £10,000. Scotland's regime under OSCR has its own thresholds, and unincorporated clubs without charitable status are governed by their own constitution rather than statute — but the governing document will still say accounts are presented at the AGM, and it's easier to meet a higher standard than explain a lower one.

Whatever the threshold says, an independent examiner is a cheap insurance policy and a reassuring line on the AGM agenda.

The AGM pack

By the time the agenda goes out, the treasurer's report is:

1. Receipts and payments account for the year, with last year alongside.
2. Statement of assets and liabilities at year-end: bank balances, cash in hand, money owed to and by the organisation, anything of value the club owns.
3. Restricted funds — one line per fund: brought forward, in, out, carried forward.
4. Bank reconciliation — the spreadsheet total agrees to the year-end statement balance. If the quarterly conversions balanced, this is a formality, and it's the one line an examiner will want to see.
5. The examiner's report, if required.

Four pages. The shoebox is not mentioned.

The handover

The real test of a treasurer's system is whether the next treasurer can run it. Leave them: the spreadsheet, the converted statements, the PDFs filed by year (kept for at least six years), the Gift Aid declarations, the list of standing orders and who they're from, and a one-page note of how the quarter works. Done that way, the handover is a coffee rather than a crisis — and the AGM vote of thanks is for the accounts, not for surviving them.