Morning all! My wife has just volunteered to take on the treasurer role for the small youth netball club she coaches at. Administration of subs, paying for court hire, insurance, volunteers expenses etc. Probably about 60 youth members, no paid staff. She’s never done anything like this previously, and was wondering if the font if all knowledge that is STW had any advice or top tips so as not to get in a tangle with it.

Thanks, Tom.

Get receipts for absolutely everything…don’t pay anything without invoice/receipt…

Good on her – it’s a thankless task.

I did it for years when I was in a bike club, as Richard says get receipts for everything – document absolutely everything. I inherited the accounts from the previous treasurer who took a more relaxed approach to things, and was a nightmare to figure out intitially.

Great. All sports need grass roots volunteers to survive, let alone thrive.

Your wife should be prepared for it to take up more time than you think and for some people, who often are the ones who wouldn’t take on any form of responsibility themselves, to moan about trivia.  Always remember that they (the noisy ones) are the minority and that far more people will be happy that your wife is prepared to contribute to the community.

I wish her luck.

Take heart also from this quote in Chipps’ latest article about moving to France:

‘We seemed to have cemented our reputations as village ‘doers’ – something that helps integration anywhere, be it in France or Folkestone. Regardless of country or region, there are always a few community doers. You see the same people manning the sign-on table at the local bike race, or encouraging the Hallowe’en displays for the children. The more you lean into making a bit of effort, the more you get out of it’

Don’t expect anything the previous treasurer did to be accurate or sensible. Keep really good records.  Chase debts quickly and hard.  Make sure any third parties know that the role has changed hands so they come to her rather than the ex treasurer.

Your wife should be prepared for …….some people, who often are the ones who wouldn’t take on any form of responsibility themselves, to moan about trivia.

+100

Subs can be tricky to collect, especially if it’s weekly/monthly. Receipts, keep an eye on the bank balance and reconcile to it.

Is it a one year term?

Expect to spend about 11.5 months waiting on bank to set up access to the clubs online banking.

Use Spond for collecting club fees

Spond works well – depending on how it is set up, you may end up being inundated with updates for events (single group where everything is posted), or inundated with people complaining they aren’t getting invites to events (multiple groups for different things).

Other than that, it seems to work very well, allows different permissions for various groups as well.

I’m treasurer for our Scouts .. the best thing we’ve done is have the subs collected automatically. Whatever system you use they will take a small cut .. but it’s worth it. You could try https://www.onlineclubmanager.com/ which is a clubs version of the Scout system.

Also consider getting a SumUp so you can take payments off people .. the less you handle any cash/cheques the better.

Our Scouts collect subs by direct debit and other payments by bank transfer wherever possible.

Agree re receipts, and banks taking 11 months to sort access, and underestimating the time to get on top of things, though once you are on top of things it gets easier.

Some knowledge of accounting helps (or a friend with that knowledge) especially ahead of AGMs…(checks calendar…)

Don’t let people get into arrears. Where money concerned people can get very emotional and things can quickly get out of hand, it difficult when it’s a club as they’ll know her both personally and as Treasurer – they need to know the Treasurer version of her is all business and it’s nothing personal.

At least there’s no staff so all the transactions will be straight-forward. Get receipts for everything, keep cash advances to a minimum and if you give any then make sure they are signed for so everyone knows where they stand.

Go for a little & often approach on keeping on top of things, it’s way easier to reconcile a weeks worth of transactions than it is a month.

Oh and keep a good supply of wine (or whatever her tipple of choice is) in the house.

Whatever the most inconvienient payment method is for your wife, a significant number of people will choose that.

You’ll be lumped with either piles of cash or checks from subs, and all your costs being electronic; or the inverse case where the sports centre or referees/umpires want cash and everyone pays you by bank transfer.

If you arent careful you’ll end up with multiple trips to the bank, and having to store piles of cash at home at your own risk.

I was treasurer for a running club. Cash was the bane of my life for the first few years. I gradually excised it altogether. At the very least try to make cash use the exception. Good luck!