You were elected in October. The previous treasurer handed over a spreadsheet, a bank login nobody wrote down, and a folder of receipts that stops somewhere in August. The year-end is five months away, and the committee wants figures it can understand at the AGM.
This is a common position for a volunteer treasurer of a small charity, a church hall trust or a village charity. You do not need to rebuild the whole year. You need a clean starting point, a record of where it came from, and a way to keep it right from here.
Step one: agree the opening balance from the last statement
Start with the bank. Take the last statement the previous treasurer gave you, or download one yourself, and note the closing balance and the date. That figure is your opening balance for the cash book.
Then check it against the last set of figures the committee approved. These are usually the minutes or the year-end accounts. If the two do not match, do not guess which one is right. Write down both figures and the difference.
Whatever you decide, record where the number came from: the statement date, the account name, the minute reference or the report it appeared in. In two years' time, when the next treasurer asks why the opening balance is what it is, that note will save a lot of time.
Set up the funds before you enter anything
Before you type in a single transaction, decide which funds the charity uses. Most small organisations have a general fund. Many also have a restricted fund, such as money given for a new roof, a youth project or a grant with conditions.
Set these up first. If you enter months of income and spending into one pot and sort it out later, money from a restricted gift will end up looking like general income. That is hard to untangle in a hurry, and it is the sort of thing an independent examiner will ask about.
If you are not sure whether a fund is restricted, check the original letter, grant offer or minute that created it. Do not assume.
Step three: enter the months since handover and tick the bank
Now enter the transactions from the handover date onwards, working from the bank statements. Go one month at a time. Enter each receipt and payment as it appears on the statement, with the date, the amount, the fund and a short description that a committee member would recognise.
When the month is entered, tick it off against the statement. Every line on the statement should match a line in the cash book, and the closing balance in the cash book should equal the closing balance on the statement. If it does not, find the difference before you move on. Small errors left alone become large ones by the year-end.
Keep your receipts and invoices with the transactions they support. A photo filed against the line is fine, as long as you can find it again.
Note the gaps and tell the committee
You will almost certainly find gaps. A month with no entries, a cheque with no description, a cash float nobody counted. Do not quietly patch them. Make a note of each gap: the period, what is missing, what you did about it and what you could not confirm.
Then tell the committee. A short paragraph at the next meeting is enough. Something like: the records before August were incomplete in two places; the opening balance has been agreed from the bank statement; the cash has been checked against the minute of the last approved budget. Committees generally prefer this to finding out later that figures were changed without anyone being told.
What to look for in club treasurer software at this point
If you are considering club treasurer software for the first time, mid-year is when the differences show. You are not looking for the most features. You are looking for four things.
First, a clear opening balance. The software should let you enter a starting figure with a date and a note of its source, and it should not quietly rewrite that figure later.
Second, funds. You should be able to set up a general fund and a restricted fund before you start entering transactions, and see each one separately in the reports.
Third, a bank tick. You need to be able to tick transactions against a statement and see clearly what is still unmatched.
Fourth, a record of who changed what. When the next treasurer takes over, they will need to know which entries were added, edited or removed, and when.
The cash book needs an internet connection. It does not work offline, so if your committee meets in a hall with poor signal, plan to enter figures at home or somewhere with a connection.
What it costs
Vasker has a Free plan at £0 a year. It includes a starter cash book with one fund, which is enough to test your opening balance and get a feel for the tick process before you commit.
The Standard plan is £59 a year. It adds full books, members and subscriptions, and reports for the committee. For a small charity with a few funds and a regular stream of donations and hire income, that is the figure to compare against the cost of a printed ledger, a spreadsheet you cannot hand over, or a day lost each month to reconciling by hand.
There is no setup fee and no sales call. You create the organisation yourself from the Sign up button on the Vasker site, and it takes a few minutes.
This is general information about the software, not advice on your charity's finances. Check your governing document and your independent examiner's requirements before you make any decisions about funds.
What the next treasurer will want to find
The person who takes over from you will want to know where the figures came from. Leave them a short note with the cash book: the opening balance and its source, the list of funds and what each one is for, the date each statement was ticked, and the gaps you found and reported.
Keep that note in the same place as the cash book, not in your email. A treasurer handover is much easier when the next volunteer can see the trail without asking you.
Start free: create your free account, set up one fund and enter your opening balance. It takes a few minutes, and you can see how the cash book looks before you decide anything else.