Most small clubs run their membership on whatever the last treasurer left behind: a spreadsheet with a tab for each year, a group chat where someone asks "who has paid?", and a cash book that agrees with neither. It works until renewal season, when three families have paid by bank transfer under their children's names and nobody knows which subscription is still outstanding.
What you are trying to do
If you searched for membership software, you probably want one place that answers three questions: who is a member, who has paid for this season, and who is behind. You also want those answers to match the bank statement. A netball club with 80 players, a Scout group where the adult volunteers pay their own fees, and a village bowls club all need the same basic thing. A list of names, the date each person renewed, the amount received, and a note of any arrears the committee has agreed to chase.
What you do not need is a system built for a company with a payroll and a finance team. You are giving up an evening a week to this. The tool has to fit around the cash book you already keep, and it has to make the figures for the AGM easy to write up.
The UK rules in plain English
This is general information, not tax advice. Check current HMRC guidance, and the guidance from your own regulator (the Charity Commission, OSCR or CCNI), before you act on anything here.
Membership subscriptions and Gift Aid are where many volunteers get caught out. A subscription is not automatically eligible for Gift Aid just because it is paid to a club or charity. HMRC's rules look at whether the member receives a benefit in return for the payment. If the only benefit is the right to belong and take part, and that benefit is of limited value, a fee may qualify. If the member receives something more substantial in return, the position is different. In some cases only part of a fee can be treated that way. Read the membership-benefit rules before you put any subscription into a Gift Aid claim.
Gift Aid itself is simpler at heart. For each eligible donation from a UK taxpayer, the charity can reclaim the basic-rate tax on it, which adds 25 pence to every pound given. The donor does not pay more. The charity needs a valid declaration, has to keep records, and must claim within HMRC's time limits. HMRC expects Gift Aid records to be kept for at least six years. The rate and the rules can change, so look at the live guidance rather than a figure from last year's newsletter.
Membership records also feed the year-end. Your independent examiner or your annual return will expect subscription income to be shown separately from donations and fundraising. If the membership records are in a mess, the figures in the accounts will be too.
How Vasker helps
Vasker is bookkeeping and Gift Aid for unpaid treasurers of clubs, charities, PTAs, Scout groups and CASCs (community amateur sports clubs). On the Standard plan, at £59 a year, you get members, subscriptions and renewals alongside full books, reports for the committee and grant matching. The membership list sits next to the cash book, so when a payment arrives you can see which subscription it belongs to. The committee report is drawn from the same figures, which means it should agree with the bank.
The Free plan (£0) gives you a starter cash book with one fund. That is enough to try the cash book with a small group before you decide whether you need members on the system. The Plus plan (£119 a year) adds Gift Aid and GASDS (Gift Aid Small Donations Scheme) claim tooling, along with the year-end tools, including the treasurer handover pack, for organisations that make claims.
Two practical points. Vasker is a web app, with App Store and Google Play clients and a PWA install. The cash book needs a connection, so do not expect it to work as offline bookkeeping. And there is no sales call and no setup fee. You create the organisation yourself from Sign up in a few minutes.
Next step
Before you choose any software, write down your current subscription rates, the number of members, and where the arrears sit. Then decide what you need the system to answer at the next AGM. If it is the membership list and the cash book, the Standard plan covers that. If you also reclaim Gift Aid on donations, look at Plus, and check the membership-benefit rules before you add subscriptions to any claim.
The handover matters too. When the role changes hands, the membership list is usually the first thing the next treasurer asks for, and it is the thing most often missing. Keeping it in the same place as the cash book means the person who follows you has something to work from.
You can create your free account and set up the starter cash book without paying anything. Try it with last year's receipts and check whether the totals match the bank before you commit to anything more.