It is usually a Tuesday evening. You open the spreadsheet to update the cash book before the committee meets, and the closing balance is £84.20 out from the bank statement. You scroll back. Someone has changed a formula in column F, a row has been pasted over another, and the only person who knew why is the previous treasurer, who now lives three counties away. Treasurers of village halls, Scout groups and sports clubs have all had this evening. At that point the question is not which software to buy. It is whether the book you keep can be checked, and handed on, without you.
This piece is for the person holding the role this year. It sets out what a club cash book has to do, five plain questions to put to any tool, the practical checks, and a way to try one month before anyone pays for anything. This is general information about keeping records, not tax or accounting advice. For Gift Aid and other HMRC rules, check current guidance on GOV.UK, and your regulator's guidance: the Charity Commission, OSCR or CCNI, as relevant to your organisation.
What a club cash book has to do
Strip away the features and the job is simple. It needs to record money in and money out, with a date, a description and a category. It needs to tick each line against the bank statement so you can see what has cleared and what is still in transit. It needs to keep restricted money apart: the hall hire deposit, the grant that must be spent on new goalposts, the Scout group's camp fund. And it needs to produce a report a committee can read in ten minutes at the AGM, showing what came in, what went out and what the bank holds now.
A spreadsheet can do all of that if it is built carefully and kept carefully. Most are not. The logic lives in cells nobody labelled, and a cash book is only as good as its audit trail.
Five plain questions to ask of any tool
Before you look at screenshots, ask these:
- Can it reconcile to the bank statement? You want to tick each transaction against its statement line, see what is unmatched, and reach a difference of zero or a named, explained gap.
- Can it hold more than one fund? A general fund on its own is rarely enough. Separate pots for restricted money keep the report honest.
- Can you attach a receipt? A paid invoice for the boiler repair, a photo of the raffle ticket book, an email from the caterer. The receipt should sit next to the line it supports.
- Can the next treasurer take over without a phone call? Look for a handover pack, not a promise. You should be able to pass on the book, the categories and the year-end figures in one go.
- Does it need a connection? Most online tools do. If you work somewhere with no signal, that matters before you commit.
Be wary of any tool that cannot answer all five clearly on its own website.
What to check on the practical side
Three things sit behind the features and matter just as much.
Two-factor authentication. Your login to a cash book is the key to the club's money. Check that the tool asks for a second step at sign-in, and that it is switched on for every committee member who needs access.
Who owns the data. Read the terms before you enter a single line. You should be able to say, in one sentence, who holds the records, where they are stored and who can see them.
What you can export if you leave. The worst outcome is a book you can only read inside the software that made it. Ask for a full export of transactions, categories and reports in a format you can open without the tool. Test it before you need it.
Also ask who the operator is and how to contact support. A company you can write to is more useful than a help page that never answers.
A short, honest note on connection
Vasker's cash book is a web app. It also has App Store and Google Play clients, and it can be installed as a PWA from the browser. It needs a connection to work. It is not an offline tool, and it will not let you keep entering transactions with no signal and sync them later. If your committee often works where there is no signal, plan for that before you choose.
Trying it on a real month
Vasker's Free plan costs £0. It gives you a starter cash book with one fund, which is enough to test the work that matters: enter one month of real transactions, tick them against the bank, and see whether the totals agree. You do not need to pay anyone to find out.
If the book suits the club and the committee wants more, Standard costs £59 a year. It adds full books, members, subscriptions, reports and grant matching. Those are useful once the cash book is working, not before. Check current plan details on the site before you decide.
Moving over without a big-bang switch
Do not move the whole history on day one. Work in three steps.
First, bring in an opening balance. Take the bank balance at a clear date, such as the last day of a month, and enter that as the starting point. Note the date and where the figure came from.
Second, enter one month. Choose a month that is closed and has a clean bank statement. Enter every receipt and payment for that month, assigning each to its fund.
Third, tick the bank and compare to the old sheet. Check the closing balance in the new book against the bank statement. Then compare the totals by category against the spreadsheet. Where they differ, you have found either a missing entry or an old formula error. Either is worth knowing before the year-end.
Once the new book is running, keep the spreadsheet as a read-only record. Do not delete it. You will want it when an examiner asks where a figure came from.
Start free: create your free account from the Sign up button at vasker.co.uk, enter one month of the cash book and see whether it matches your bank statement. There is no sales call and no setup fee.
Checklist for the next committee meeting
Take this list to the committee and tick what applies to your club:
- Does the tool reconcile to the bank statement line by line?
- Can we hold restricted funds separately from general funds?
- Can receipts be attached to the transaction they support?
- Can the next treasurer take over from a handover pack, not from memory?
- Do we know whether we need a connection, and is that acceptable?
- Is two-factor authentication on for everyone with access?
- Do we know who owns the data and who the operator is?
- Can we export the full book, categories and reports if we leave?
- Have we tested one real month against the bank?
- Have we agreed who checks the reconciliation before each committee meeting?