You have the login. You may also have a spreadsheet with a dozen tabs, a shoebox of receipts and a committee meeting in five weeks. Nobody has written down how the last treasurer did the reconciliation, and the one tab everyone is nervous about is called "Old version (don't use)". You do not need a project plan for this. You need to know, before the next meeting, whether a new tool can hold the figures properly.
This routine takes three evenings. It uses a free cash book, your own bank statement and a real fund, and it ends with a one-page note you can hand to the committee or the next volunteer. It does not replace the questions you should ask any supplier, and it does not tell you what to buy. It tells you whether the thing you are looking at works with your club's actual money.
Evening one, and the fund on evening two, work on the Free plan, which gives you a starter cash book with one fund. Members, subscriptions and the full reports are on Standard (£59 a year), and the year-end and Gift Aid tools are on the paid plans. There is no trial of Standard or Plus, so for evenings two and three, use the Free plan where you can and read those screens in the help pages before you decide to upgrade.
Evening one: does the balance match the statement?
Pick last month's bank statement. Do not use the whole year yet. A single month is enough to show whether the tool reads your figures correctly.
Take a rowing club as an example. Its treasurer has a current account, a bar float that gets paid in as cash, and boat hire income that arrives by bank transfer. Last month's statement has around forty lines. Enter them into the cash book, one by one, and mark each as reconciled against the statement as you go.
At the end of the evening, check two things. First, does the closing balance in the cash book match the closing balance on the statement? Second, if it does not, can you see where the difference sits? A good tool makes the gap easy to find. A bad one leaves you guessing.
Keep a note of how long the entry took. Keep a note of any line you had to think about twice. Those lines will tell you more about the software than any feature list.
Evening two: one real fund and one member
The second evening tests the things that make a club's books different from a household budget. Add one restricted fund, such as a grant for new oars or a pot a parent teacher association (PTA) raised for playground equipment and must spend on that purpose. Then add one member with an annual subscription, paid in two instalments.
Then ask the question the committee will ask at the AGM: can I see what is restricted and what is free to spend? Run the report and look at it as someone who has never seen your books. Does it show the fund on its own line? Does the subscription show as income for the right year? Does the balance you would report to the committee still make sense?
If you find yourself rewriting the report in a separate spreadsheet to make it readable, note that down. It means the tool is not doing the job you need, even if it is cheap.
On subscriptions, be careful about one point. Some membership fees can qualify for Gift Aid and some cannot, depending on the benefits members receive. Do not assume a subscription is claimable because it is paid to a club. Check HMRC's current guidance on membership benefits before you treat any subscription as Gift Aid income. This is general information, not tax advice.
Evening three: the year-end items and the two ZIP files
The third evening looks at the year end, when most volunteers discover what the spreadsheet never did.
Run an income and expenditure report for the year so far. Check whether it can show the current year against the previous one. If your club has a prior-year figure, you should be able to see the comparison without copying numbers across by hand. Note whether the figures match the cash book you built on the first two evenings.
Then look at what the tool offers for the examiner and the next treasurer. On Vasker, the year-end tools include an independent examiner ZIP and a treasurer handover ZIP, along with a year-end balance snapshot that does not rewrite your opening balances. Open each one. Ask yourself what you would need to see if you were an examiner checking the books, or a new volunteer who has never met the last treasurer.
An examiner pack should show the paperwork behind the figures: the reconciled cash book, the fund records and the supporting documents. A handover pack should explain what the club holds, where the logins are kept and what happens next. You are not checking whether the files are perfect. You are checking whether they make sense to someone who was not there.
If you are a community amateur sports club (CASC) or a registered charity with a Gift Aid claim in mind, the Gift Aid and GASDS tools sit on the Plus plan, and their rules are more involved. Treat them as a separate exercise and check the current HMRC guidance first. Vasker is general information for volunteers, not legal or tax advice, and it does not guarantee a claim will succeed.
The one-page note
At the end of the three evenings, write a single sheet. Keep it simple. Three headings will do:
- Time taken. How long did each evening really take? Include the time you spent working out how the tool works, not just the entry.
- Anything confusing. Which screens or terms did you have to stop and read twice?
- What you would explain to the next volunteer. Write down the things you would need to tell a successor, such as where the bank login lives or how you handled cash.
This note is worth more than a sales demo. It is evidence from your own club, and the committee can read it in five minutes.
Plans in plain terms
Vasker has three yearly plans. The Free plan is £0 and gives you a starter cash book with one fund. The Standard plan is £59 a year and covers full books, members, subscriptions, reports and grant matching. The Plus plan is £119 a year and adds Gift Aid and GASDS claim tooling, plus examiner access tooling.
There is no sales call and no setup fee. You create the organisation yourself, and the sign-up takes a few minutes.
GASDS, the Gift Aid Small Donations Scheme, is a top-up on qualifying small cash donations without individual declarations. It has rules and caps set by HMRC, so check the current guidance before you rely on it for a collecting tin or a raffle.
Honest limits
The cash book needs a connection. It does not work offline, so if your evening sessions happen in a village hall with no signal, plan for that. Do not expect to enter a month of receipts on the train and sync later.
Every account uses two-factor authentication. That matters when the login has been passed from one volunteer to another and nobody has changed the password in three years.
Vasker is a web app, with App Store and Google Play clients and a progressive web app (PWA) install. None of that changes the offline limit.
Start on the free plan
Start on the Free plan and decide after the three evenings. You have lost nothing if the tool does not suit your club, and the one-page note will tell you why. If the cash book reconciles, the fund report makes sense and the handover pack reads well, you will know that before you pay for anything.
Create your free account and enter last month's bank lines this week. You can be on the first evening's task before your next committee meeting.