It is the night before the committee meets. The bank statement shows one figure, the spreadsheet shows another, and the gap is £37.50. Someone paid the pitch fee in cash back in March and nobody wrote it down. You have until nine tomorrow morning to find it.
Most of that gap is avoidable. It builds up when the books are only touched once a year, or when receipts sit in a shoebox until somebody asks for them. A short routine each month, roughly an evening, stops the surprises before they reach the committee table.
A monthly routine in five steps
This routine works for a five-a-side league, a cricket club or a rowing club alike. Pick one evening, the same time each month, and keep to it.
- Enter the month's receipts and payments. One line per item, with a date, a short description and a fund name.
- Tick each line against the bank statement. Anything on the statement but missing from the book, or the other way round, gets a mark.
- Write down the difference. Note the gap between the statement balance and the cash book balance, even when it is zero.
- Fix it. The usual causes are a cheque not yet cleared, a transfer typed twice, or a card payment dated the wrong day. Correct the original line. Do not add a plug figure to make the totals agree.
- Record the closing balance. Date it and write it at the foot of the page. That number is where next month starts.
A rowing club treasurer might find the boat-hire payment has gone through with a different date from the one on the invoice. Ticking the line takes a minute. Finding it in June, after three months of entries, takes an evening and a cup of tea you will not enjoy.
The cash book needs an internet connection to work, so choose a time when you can get online. It is not an offline ledger.
Keep the money in the right pots
A single bank balance hides too much. Your club probably has money with different strings attached, and the committee needs to see which pot each pound belongs to.
A simple split for a small club looks like this:
- Match fees. Subscriptions and session fees, spent on running costs.
- Bar takings. Kept separate so the bar's margins are visible on their own.
- Restricted coaching grant. Money given for a named purpose. If the grant letter says it is for coaching, it cannot quietly pay for new glasses behind the bar. Keep it in its own fund and check the conditions.
- Kit fund. Money set aside for replacing shirts, balls or oars on a planned cycle.
Each entry carries a fund name. Spending comes out of the fund it belongs to, and a transfer between funds is recorded as a transfer, not as income or spending. A committee can then see what is genuinely spendable before it votes on a new purchase.
If your organisation is a community amateur sports club (CASC), the same fund split works. The reporting and tax rules for CASCs are their own, so check current HMRC guidance for your club rather than relying on a general rule.
Receipts and evidence
You do not need a filing cabinet. You need a predictable place for each receipt and a file name that tells the next treasurer what it is without opening it.
A workable pattern:
- Scan or photograph every receipt the day you get it, including cash paid to a volunteer and the bottle of milk bought for the match-day urn.
- Keep one folder per financial year, with a subfolder for each month.
- Name files by date, payee and amount, for example
2026-03-14 Cricket ground hire 85.00.pdf. - Write a short note on any receipt that is not obvious, such as who the cash was for and which event it was linked to.
Keep bank statements and receipts for at least six years. HMRC expects Gift Aid records to be kept for that long, and it is sensible to apply the same habit to everything else. This is general information, not tax advice. Check current HMRC guidance for your organisation.
The one-page report for the committee
The committee does not need every line in the cash book. It needs one page that answers four questions: what came in, what went out, what is left in each fund, and who still owes the club money.
Here is an illustrative example for a rowing club, using made-up figures:
| Section | Amount |
|---|---|
| Income this month | £1,240 |
| Spending this month | £980 |
| Balance: match fees | £2,310 |
| Balance: bar takings | £655 |
| Balance: restricted coaching grant | £1,100 |
| Balance: kit fund | £430 |
| Arrears outstanding | £180 across 6 members |
Run the report from the cash book each month, not once a year. A committee that sees the same layout every month can spot a problem early, such as a fund running down or a set of arrears growing. The arrears line is the only point where members come into it. Subscription management is a separate job, so keep this page to the totals.
What to leave for year-end
Year-end is much easier if you keep a short notes list as you go. Add a line each time something happens that would puzzle a stranger in twelve months' time. Keep it in the same folder as the cash book.
Useful entries include:
- Equipment bought, with the approximate cost and where the receipt is filed.
- Money owed to the club, and any agreement to write it off.
- Grant spending, and the date a report went to the funder.
- Committee decisions that moved money between funds.
- Cash taken at events that was counted by two people, and who they were.
A notes list of ten lines takes a minute a month. Compare it with trying to reconstruct a year from memory in the week before the examiner asks for the pack.
Where Vasker fits
Vasker is bookkeeping for unpaid treasurers of clubs, charities, PTAs, Scout groups and CASCs. The cash book stays with the club, so when your term ends, the next treasurer inherits the records rather than a spreadsheet nobody can open.
If you want to try the routine above, start with the Free plan at £0. It gives you a starter cash book with one fund, which is enough to practise the monthly tick and see whether the report layout suits your committee. When you need full books, members, subscriptions and reports, the Standard plan is £59 a year.
No sales call is needed, and there is no setup fee. Start free from the Sign up page on vasker.co.uk and set up the organisation in a few minutes. You can keep your existing spreadsheet running alongside it until you trust the figures.
This is general information about bookkeeping routines, not tax or legal advice.