If you are treasurer of a community amateur sports club (CASC), you may have inherited a spreadsheet with one income column. Subscriptions, bar takings, a council grant and the raffle all go into the same total. The bank balance reconciles for a while. Then the committee asks how much the bar made, or whether the grant has been spent on what it was given for, and the answer takes an evening to find.
The arithmetic is rarely the problem. The categories were never separated, so pulling a figure back out means checking receipts and bank statements line by line.
The problem: one column for subs, bar and grants
Most of the difficulty comes from mixing money that has different rules attached. Membership subscriptions, bar sales, grants and donations may all sit in the same account, but they are not the same kind of income. The committee will want to see each one. The examiner will want to trace each one back to a bank line and a document.
If you start the year with a single income column, you will end it with a reconstruction job. It is much easier to split the cash book on the first day than in March.
Which income and fund splits matter for the committee and the examiner
At a minimum, keep these income lines apart: membership subscriptions, bar and catering sales, grants, donations and fundraising events. Keep them separate even when the sums are small. A line that looks trivial in January can be the question in the AGM.
Funds matter as much as income lines. A general fund covers day-to-day running costs. A restricted fund holds money a funder has given for a named purpose, such as new floodlights. A designated fund is money the committee has set aside for a future project, such as pitch repairs. Check your constitution and any grant letter to see what is restricted. The wording of the grant governs, not the treasurer's preference.
An independent examiner will check that the figures reconcile to the bank and that restricted money was used as intended. If grant money and bar takings share one total, that check becomes slow and uncertain. If they sit in separate funds from the first entry, the examiner can follow each one without a detective trail.
In Vasker's cash book, each entry is posted against an income or expenditure line and a fund, so a grant entered against the restricted fund stays there when the reports are run. The Free plan gives you a starter cash book with one fund, which is enough to test the layout before you commit. Standard, at £59 a year, covers full books with more funds, members, subscriptions and reports.
Members, subscriptions and arrears alongside the cash book
Subscriptions are the income line that most often drifts. A payment arrives with a surname and no reference, or a member pays half and says the rest is coming. Without a members list beside the cash book, nobody can say who owes what at the end of the season.
Keep the members list alongside the cash book so each subscription payment is matched to a person and a membership year. Arrears then become a short list you can take to the committee, rather than a guess built from memory.
If your club is considering Gift Aid on subscriptions, take care. A subscription does not automatically qualify. Whether membership fees can be included in a Gift Aid claim depends on the benefits members receive and on HMRC's current rules. Read HMRC's guidance on membership benefits before you treat any subscription as Gift Aid eligible. This is general information for volunteer treasurers, not tax advice.
Year-end figures that should come out without retyping
The committee wants an income and expenditure statement with last year's figures beside this year's. The annual return needs figures that match the same books. If you retype the numbers from the spreadsheet into a second document, a transposed figure will eventually turn up in the wrong place.
The better approach is to produce every year-end figure from the entries you made during the year. Vasker's year-end tools produce an income and expenditure statement with a prior-year comparison, the figures for the annual return, an examiner pack, and a handover pack for the next treasurer. Before you sign anything, still check the totals against the bank statement. Software can arrange the figures, but you are the one who confirms they are right.
For the annual return and any independent examination requirement for your CASC, check HMRC's current CASC guidance and your club's own governing document. The rules set out what must be reported and when.
Connection needed: the cash book is online, not offline
The cash book runs online and needs a connection. Vasker is a web app, with App Store and Google Play clients and a PWA you can install on your phone or laptop. It does not work offline, so do not plan to enter bar takings at a remote pitch and expect them to appear later on their own.
A practical routine is to note takings on paper or in your phone's notes at the event, then enter them once you are back on a connection. Keep the paper note until the entry is in the bank reconciliation. Two-factor authentication is available on every account, which matters once more than one committee member can see the books.
Before the next committee meeting
You do not need to change everything at once. Pick one fund, enter the last month's bar takings and subscriptions as separate lines, and check the totals against the bank. If the layout works for your club, the rest of the year can follow the same pattern.
If you want to try this before your next committee meeting, Start free and set up your cash book with one fund. You can create your free account from Sign up, with no sales call and no setup fee.
This article is general information for UK volunteer treasurers. It is not legal, tax or accounting advice. Check current HMRC guidance on CASCs, Gift Aid and membership benefits, and confirm your reporting duties against your club's governing document.