If your club runs a bar or clubhouse tills, you will know the month-end feeling. The till roll says one thing, the float has moved, and the bank paying-in slips do not quite add up to either. Nobody did anything wrong on purpose. Cash moved through several hands over several nights, and nobody wrote it down in the same place twice.
This piece is for the volunteer treasurer who inherits that mess. It shows one routine you can run each week, and how to set it up in Vasker's cash book. It does not cover VAT on bar sales, bar staff pay or licensing. Those are outside this piece, so check them with your own advisers.
This is general information for volunteer treasurers, not tax or legal advice.
Keep three things apart
Most of the confusion comes from mixing three different figures into one number. Keep them apart from the start.
Till takings are what the tills say was sold over a session. This is income. It is the figure you record for the bar.
The float is the cash you put into the tills before trading starts so there is change to give. It is not income and it is not a cost. It is money that moves from the bank to the till and should come back to the bank at the end of the session, less any takings you banked.
What actually reaches the bank is the paying-in. It may be less than the till takings for good reasons: the float was topped up from takings, a supplier was paid in cash, or a note was short. Each of those needs a line of its own.
If you keep these three figures separate, the difference between them tells you something useful. If you mix them, the difference is just a worry.
A simple weekly routine
The routine that works for most small clubs has four steps, once a week or after each busy night.
- Count with a second person. Two people count the cash together and both sign or initial the count sheet. One person counting alone is how errors go unnoticed for months.
- Write down the figure. Record the till takings, the float at opening, and the cash counted at close. Put the date and the session on the sheet. Keep the sheet with the cash until it is banked.
- Record the paying-in. Enter the amount actually banked against that date, with the paying-in slip reference if your bank gives one.
- Tick it against the bank. When the statement or online banking shows the credit, tick the paying-in in the cash book. Anything not ticked is still open.
That is the whole routine. It takes a few minutes if it is done every week. It takes a long evening if you leave it until the AGM.
When the till and the bank differ
They will differ sometimes. The mistake is to make the figures agree by changing one of them. Do not do that.
Record the difference as its own line, with a short reason. A note such as "cash short on Friday, float not recounted" is far more useful to the next person than a silent adjustment. If the difference is small and you cannot find the cause, say so in the note and leave it visible.
If the same difference keeps appearing, look at the process. Is the float counted at the start of each session? Does the person closing the till count with someone else? Is cash ever taken out before the count? The answer is usually in the routine, not in the arithmetic.
A visible difference that you have explained is a much easier conversation with the committee than a tidy total that nobody can trace.
Keep bar income separate from subs and donations
The committee report will make sense only if bar income is not mixed up with membership subscriptions, donations, hall hire or grants. Give bar takings their own income category in the cash book. Give the float its own note so it is never counted as income.
This matters at the year-end. When someone asks how much the bar made, you should be able to answer from one line, not by adding up a dozen mixed entries. It also helps when the committee asks why subscriptions went up or down, because the bar figure is not hiding in the same total.
Bar income is not a Gift Aid item. Keep it out of any Gift Aid declaration work, and check current HMRC guidance if you are unsure which of your receipts can be included in a claim.
How this looks in the Vasker cash book
The Free plan gives you a starter cash book with one fund, at £0. For a single bar and a clubhouse float, that is often enough to start. You can set up a bar income category, enter each session's takings and paying-in, and keep the float as a visible note against each entry.
When you need full books, members and subscriptions, reports for the committee, or grant matching, the Standard plan is £59 a year. Many clubs start on Free and move to Standard once the membership list or the AGM pack becomes the bigger job.
The cash book needs a connection. Make your entries when you are online. Do not rely on it for offline bookkeeping on a dark clubhouse wall, and keep your count sheets as the paper record until the entry is saved.
What the next treasurer will need
You will not be the treasurer for ever. The next person will need to know three things quickly.
- Who counts. Name the usual pair who count each session, and the standby pair when someone is away.
- Who banks. Say who takes the paying-in to the bank or pays it in online, and how often.
- Where the float lives. Write down where the float is kept, who holds the key or safe code, and the agreed amount.
Put these on one page and keep it with the cash book. A handover is far easier when the next volunteer does not have to ask who has the safe key.
First-month checklist
- Agree a float amount and write it down.
- Name the two people who count each session.
- Set up a bar income category in the cash book, separate from subs and donations.
- Run the four-step routine every week, including the second-person count.
- Record every difference between till and bank with a short reason.
- Tick each paying-in against the bank when it appears.
- Write the one-page note on who counts, who banks and where the float lives.
If you want to try this routine in a cash book built for small organisations, you can create your free account and set up a cash book with a bar income category and a float. There is no sales call and no setup fee.