How a Treasurer collects lodge dues without a January chase

Set the year and the amount, send the request to every sitting member, record card, bank, and cash against the same row, keep waivers and leavers visible, offer instalments only if the lodge has decided to, and remind on a cadence the Master has already seen.

That is the whole dues year. Everything else is a side effect. Gift Aid on the charitable portion, if the lodge claims it, rides on the same paid rows. The bank match rides on the same payments. January becomes a short list, not a personal email campaign from one officer's inbox.

A lodge that cannot produce that list is not short of goodwill. It is short of a single record. Two spreadsheets, a paying-in book, and a WhatsApp thread will always disagree by the third meeting. Size is not the argument. A thirty-member lodge still produces a dues amount, a due date, exceptions, and a current account. One list is.

A January chase is what happens when the year was never raised as a year. The Treasurer remembers who usually pays at installation. The Secretary remembers who resigned in the autumn. The bank has credits with no reference. Someone paid cash at the festive board and nobody ticked a row. By the first committee of the new calendar, the unpaid list is a reconstruction, and the reconstruction is an inbox.

The chase feels personal because it is personal. Each late brother gets a different email. Each paid brother who is still on the handwritten list gets a reminder he did not deserve. Each waived brother is either chased by accident or deleted so the count looks tidy. The Master then hears a number that cannot be shown twice.

That is not a failure of courtesy. Courtesy is cheap when the record is true. A reminder to a brother who has already paid is worse than no reminder. It trains the lodge to ignore the Treasurer, and it burns the one conversation you need for the people who are actually late. The cure is a year that already knows who is paid.

Lodges lose months when they treat dues as a spring hobby. The amount lives in last year's minutes. The sitting list lives in the Secretary's roll. The money lives in a processor dashboard and a paying-in book. None of those places is the dues year. The year is the single list that holds paid, unpaid, waived, leaver, and on a plan as states, not as rumours.

Treat the year as a calendar, not a spring panic. If any of these steps live in a different brother's phone, the year does not close. It just ends. Write the calendar as if the next Treasurer will open it in June with no handover meeting.

The work starts before a single request goes out. The lodge has already decided the subscription for the year. The Treasurer's job is to put that decision on every sitting member at once, not to invent a new fee in January when someone asks, and not to type a different amount on each row because a conversation happened in the car park.

A clean raise has four facts on the year: the amount, the due date, who is in scope, and whether any part of the sub is charitable. The last of those is an officer decision the lodge, or its charity, has already made. If you use a charitable split, set it on the year so every later payment inherits the same rule. How that split is decided belongs on the sibling Gift Aid desks. This page only needs the split written before anyone is asked to pay.

Write those four facts where a successor can find them. Amount, date, split if any, and the membership the run was sent to. If they live only in last year's minutes, you will rebuild them every January. Minutes record that the lodge decided a figure. They do not raise the year. The year is raised when every in-scope member carries the same decision on one list.

Do not raise from memory. Raise from the sitting membership as it stands on the day you send. Then mark exceptions on the row: honorary, country, mid-year joiner, resigned since last installation, waived for this year. The raise is a photograph of who was asked. Later changes are edits with a reason, not a silent redraw of the photograph.

Who is in scope sounds obvious and is where most lists rot. Honorary members, country members, joining members mid-year, and brethren who have resigned since the last installation all sit in different places if the roll and the dues year are not the same list. Raise from the sitting membership, then mark exceptions on the row. Do not delete people to make the unpaid count look tidy.

The Secretary's roll and the Treasurer's year will drift if they are two files. A brother who resigned in October is still a fact on this year's list if he was asked to pay, or if he paid before he left. A brother who joined in March is a fact on this year's list even if last year's spreadsheet never heard of him. The failure mode is a Treasurer who chases a leaver and misses a joiner, then tells committee the lodge is 'about the same as last year'.

Honorary and country arrangements are lodge decisions, not software features this page will invent a rule for. Write the category the lodge already uses. If an honorary member is not asked to pay, that is a waiver or an out-of-scope mark, not a vanished person. If a country member pays a different amount, that amount belongs on the row with a reason a successor can read.

A profile that lasts beyond one year is a different fact from a one-year exception. A brother waived this year may be asked next year. If the exception is treated as a deleted member, you will miss him when you raise the next year, or you will chase him by accident. The year you are running is this year. Next year is a new raise.

Once the year is raised, send it. Not a personal email to the brethren you remember. Not a note on the summons that assumes everyone reads the last paragraph. A request that lands with every sitting member, on the same day, with the same amount and the same way to pay.

How they pay is less important than that every method hits the same row. Card, bank transfer, and recorded cash are three routes to one balance. If cash goes in a tin and card goes in a processor dashboard, you will spend March rebuilding who is paid. Record the payment against the member when it happens, not when you next sit down with the bank statement.

Members should be able to see their own balance without asking the Treasurer. A portal, a printed request with a reference, or a standing instruction the lodge already uses: pick what the lodge will actually operate. The failure mode is a brother who paid in November and is still on a handwritten chase list in February because nobody ticked the row.

Do not wait for the first committee to discover that half the lodge never received the request. Send, then look at the delivery, then look at the unpaid list. Those are three different questions. Mixing them is how January starts late.

An invoice, or a dues request, is the first telling. A reminder is the second telling to people who are still unpaid. Harassment is a third telling to someone who has already paid, or a first telling invented in a panic because committee is on Tuesday. The lodge does not need a firmer tone. It needs a list that is true before anyone writes.

A working cadence is dull, and dull is the point. Send the year. Wait the period the lodge has agreed. Remind the unpaid. Wait again. Escalate only the remainder, and only after you have checked the bank and the cash book for money that arrived without a tick. If a payment is sitting unmatched, that brother is not late. The books are. Write to him after you have ticked the row, or do not write at all.

The cadence should be public enough that the Master has seen it. Personal emails invented at midnight are how January becomes a chase. Some lodges remind once after thirty days and once after sixty. Some remind before the first installation of the new year and not again until committee has seen the remainder. This guide will not invent the lawful interval for your lodge. It will say: write the cadence down before the first request goes out, and do not change it because one brother is awkward.

Do not write to a waived member. Do not write to a member who has left and whose row is closed. Do not write to a member on a current instalment plan. Do not write to someone whose payment is already in the bank. Those four exclusions are courtesy and they are also accuracy. A reminder that ignores them is how the Treasurer loses the room.

Escalation is an officer decision, not a software trick. Some lodges ask the Almoner before a firm letter. Some have standing orders about arrears. This page will not invent a UGLE or Provincial rule about either. If you escalate, escalate from the same list, keep a copy of what was sent, and do not invent a private tariff for friends.

Keep a record of what was sent and when. When a brother says he never heard, you should be able to show the request and the reminder without searching a personal inbox. When the next Treasurer takes over in June, that history is part of the books.

The only list that matters is the year you raised. Paid, unpaid, waived, and left should be states on that list, not tabs in a second workbook. If the Treasurer keeps a working copy and the Secretary keeps the roll, they will drift by the second meeting. If instalments exist, they are a fifth state on the same year, not a WhatsApp thread.

Paid means money is on the member for this year, from a method you can point at: a card confirmation, a bank line, or cash counted and recorded. It does not mean a screenshot in an inbox, or a memory that someone always pays at installation. If you cannot open the row and see the payment, it is not paid for the purpose of committee. A successor should be able to open the same row in June and see the same payment.

Unpaid is everyone still in scope who has not paid and has not been waived and has not left. That number should be boring. It should fall as money arrives. It should not require a Friday night rebuild before the Master asks. If producing it takes a weekend, the record is wrong even if the bank is healthy. Unpaid is not a moral category. It is a remaining balance on a named year.

A waiver is money the lodge has chosen not to take. A leaver is a member who is no longer in scope, with a record of what was asked and what actually arrived. Those are not the same story as unpaid. Mixing them is how a Treasurer gets asked why the arrears look worse than they are, or why a Gift Aid pack later includes a brother who was never asked to pay. Committee needs the counts beside each other: paid, unpaid, waived, left, on a plan.

A waiver is not a deleted row. It is a decision the lodge, or the officers it has authorised, has made about a named member for a named year, with a reason someone can still read. Delete the line and you will claim the wrong unpaid total, or worse, pad a Gift Aid pack with a brother who was never asked to pay.

Visible means a successor can see who was waived, by whom, and why, without a private conversation that never got written down. Reasons can be short. They should not be theatrical. Hardship, honorary status, a joining arrangement mid-year: write the category the lodge already uses. Do not invent a new scheme in the cash book, and do not write a medical story into a file more people will open than need to.

A profile-level waiver that lasts beyond one year is a different fact from a one-year exception. Keep them distinct. A brother waived this year may be in scope next year. If the waiver is treated as a vanished member, you will miss him when you raise the next year, or you will chase him by accident. The raise should ask the sitting list a new question each year. Last year's waiver is evidence, not an automatic answer.

Who may grant a waiver is a lodge decision. Write it at year start, next to the amount. A Treasurer who waives friends in private and then presents a clean unpaid list is not being kind. He is hiding a decision the lodge may later need to explain. Two officers should be able to see the same waived rows. The wider lodge sees a count, not every brother's reason, unless your own standing orders say otherwise. We are not inventing a UGLE rule here.

A leaver who paid is a closed row with money on it. A leaver who had not paid is a closed row with a remaining balance the lodge has either written off, waived, or still regards as due. Those are three different facts. Do not delete the name so the unpaid list looks kinder. The successor needs to see why that brother is not in next year's raise.

A joiner mid-year needs the part-year method the lodge already uses, written on the row. Some lodges ask for a full year. Some ask for a proportion. Some have a joining arrangement that is not the annual sub. This page will not invent the lawful figure for your lodge. It will say: write the method before the first joiner of the year arrives, apply it the same way twice, and do not invent a private discount in a side note.

Money taken this year toward next year's sub is not this year's paid row. It is a credit, or next year's row started early. Treating a November standing order as this year's clearance is how years bleed into each other. The brother will insist he is paid. The books will insist he is not. Both will be looking at a different year. Write the destination of the money when it arrives.

A late payer who clears in the next calendar year still belongs on this dues year if this was the year he was asked to pay. The payment date is a bank fact. The year it settles is the year you raised. Do not leave next year's Treasurer to invent a paid tick for money you already banked against the old year.

Some brethren cannot pay in one hit. That is a fact about household cash, not a failure of the Craft. If the lodge offers a plan, the ledger must show the plan and the remaining balance. A side note in WhatsApp is not a plan. It is how the next Treasurer inherits an argument.

The lodge decides whether instalments exist, how many, and on what cadence. Monthly and quarterly are the usual choices because they match how people actually pay. Do not offer a plan you will not collect. A plan with no due dates is a polite way of writing off the balance without calling it a waiver. If you will not send a reminder when a slice is missed, you did not offer a plan. You offered a hope.

Each instalment is a payment against the same year. When one lands, the remaining balance falls. When one fails, that instalment is late, not the whole friendship. Remind against the missed slice. Do not reset a brother who has paid three of four into the same chase as someone who has paid nothing. Committee should see remaining balances, not a binary paid-or-not that hides the work already done.

If the lodge does not offer instalments, say so and stick to it. A Treasurer who invents private arrangements for a few friends will not be able to explain the unpaid list in committee. If you do offer them, every plan sits on the year you raised, next to paid, unpaid, waived, and left. Four or five states. One list.

The Working Tools help pages we re-read on 11 September 2026 describe prepaid credits: money taken this year toward next year's invoice, rather than slices of this year's remaining balance. That is a real published model. It is not the same fact as an instalment plan on the year you have already raised. Write standing orders toward next year as credits or as next year's row.

Card, bank transfer, cash, and cheque are four routes to the same row. The method does not change the year. A brother who pays by transfer is not a different class of member from a brother who pays by card. If the methods live in different places, you will spend March arguing about who is paid.

Card money should already know it succeeded or failed. The Treasurer should not be typing 'paid' from a screenshot. A failed card is not unpaid in the same way as a brother who never tried. It needs a retry or another method. A refund needs the original payment and the reason. Both should be visible on the member, so the later bank line is not a mystery.

Bank transfers need a reference a human would accept. Ask for one on the request. When a credit arrives with no reference, it is an unmatched bank line, not a paid member. Leave it visible until you attach it. Do not guess. Matching a £150 transfer to the first £150 unpaid brother because the numbers agree is how two rows go wrong at once. The longer match is how a Treasurer matches the lodge bank.

Cash and cheques will never arrive with a processor confirmation. They arrive as a paying-in, a counter credit, or a cheque that clears three days later. Write them against the member on the day you take them, then match the bank when the line appears. A festive-board envelope that 'was definitely dues' is not a paid row until it has a name, an amount, and a paying-in you can still find. Dining money from that night is a different job. It has its own guide: festive-board payments.

If the lodge claims Gift Aid on any part of the subscription, the charitable portion belongs on this year's paid rows. It does not belong in a side tab invented when the pack is due. This page will not rewrite the split desk. The method is already written at how a Treasurer splits dues so Gift Aid can be claimed. The wider reclaim year is how a lodge reclaims Gift Aid on dues, alms, and donations. The product facts sit on Gift Aid.

What this dues year needs is simpler. The lodge, or its charity, has already decided whether any part of the sub is a gift. That decision is one of the four facts on the raise. Every later payment inherits it. Gift Aid is then computed only where a valid declaration exists. Unpaid rows generate no gift. Waived rows generate no gift. Undeclared paid rows generate a payment and no Gift Aid line. A successor should be able to see those differences without telephoning you.

A membership fee is not automatically a gift. Claiming Gift Aid on the whole sub because it is the largest number on the books is how a pack becomes hard to defend. Neighbouring lodges may split differently. Copying them without looking at your own resolution and charity status does not create a record you can defend. This page will not invent the lawful percentage, and it will not invent a UGLE or Provincial rule about it.

LodgePay already publishes the only illustration this page will repeat. We re-checked the public Gift Aid and pricing pages on 11 September 2026. A typical 30-member lodge reclaims £1,125 a year: £225 from dues and £900 from eight festive boards, plus GASDS on cash up to £8,000 a year. The £225 is the dues slice. It assumes the lodge decided a split, recorded the payments, and held valid declarations on those named gifts. Do not quote a typical lodge to committee as if it were your books, and do not invent a higher dues reclaim.

The same pages publish Essentials from £149 a month billed annually, which is £1,788 a year, or £169 if billed monthly. Complete is from £229 a month billed annually. Group is from £349. Province is from £2,000 a month plus £35 per lodge, typically £4,500 a month. The reclaim does not pay the subscription. Say that line in committee if someone starts subtracting £1,125 from £1,788 and calling the difference a reason to skip the process. The illustration is not your books, and the subscription is not funded by a pack you have not yet assembled.

The bank is the truth. The dues list is a hope until the credits match it. A Treasurer who chases from the unpaid list without looking at the statement will write to brethren whose money is already in the account. That is how a careful lodge starts looking careless.

Import the month. Match lines to known dues payments. Leave unmatched credits visible until someone owns them. Do not hide a no-reference transfer in a miscellaneous tab and then send a reminder. Month-end is confirmation that the paid rows and the statement agree, not archaeology in March. The longer method is how a Treasurer matches the lodge bank every month. This page only needs the rule that a reminder waits on the match.

One bank line can be one member. That is the easy case. Tick it and move on. The hard cases are the lump with no names, the duplicate, the payment toward next year, and the credit that is dining rather than dues. Those are why the unmatched list exists. Give each leftover an owner. Ignoring a line is a decision with a reason, not a disappearance.

Do not treat the processor as a second bank. Card money that has not yet settled is not in the lodge account. Cash still in a tin is not in the lodge account. Both need records on the member or the meeting. Neither is a reason to adjust the statement to match a hope, and neither is a reason to call a brother late.

Dining, raffle, and alms are the same evening as each other. They are not the annual subscription. A brother who pays for dinner in November has not paid his dues unless you recorded a dues amount against his year. Mixing the two is how both jobs fail.

Cash taken on the night can be dining, alms, raffle, or a late sub pressed into the Treasurer's hand. Write what it actually was. A tin that went to the bank as a lump cannot later become a named dues payment. The night job is how a lodge runs festive-board money. Stay here when the pain is the year, not the dinner.

Before each committee the Treasurer should be able to show four or five numbers from the same year: paid, unpaid, waived, left, and on a plan if plans exist. Those numbers should take minutes. If they take a weekend, the record is the problem, not the diary.

The Master does not need every brother's arrears. He needs to know that the year was raised, that the request was sent, that reminders followed the agreed cadence, and that the unpaid remainder has been checked against the bank.

Access should be limited to the officers who need it. The Treasurer needs the year. The Charity Steward needs the charitable slice if the lodge files Gift Aid. The whole committee does not need a folder of home addresses forwarded on a thread. That is ordinary data care for a membership body holding names and payments, not a Craft rule.

Handover fails when the dues year lives in one brother's inbox. The next Treasurer inherits a colour-coded tab, a paying-in book that does not match, and three brethren who insist they paid at the festive board in November. Committee then hears a number that cannot be shown, and January starts again.

The test is simple. Can a successor open this year's list and see who was asked, who paid, who was waived, who left, who is on a plan, and what reminders already went? If any of those answers requires last year's passwords, a personal mailbox, or a phone call, the year was a diary. It was not a Treasurer's system.

Write the year as if there will be no handover meeting. There often is not. The books that survive are the books that do not need a guided tour. Two officers should already have been able to see the same year before anyone stood down.

Named competitors are real. Buy the one that publishes the job you actually have. We re-checked public pages on 11 September 2026. We will not invent a feature, a price, or a Gift Aid claim those pages do not state.

The Working Tools is a secretary operating system with a real Treasurer's cash book. We re-read the public pricing page, the treasurer features page, and the treasurer help pages on 11 September 2026. Pricing remains £5.00 a month, with a 30-day trial. Sibling desks on this site last published extra lodges at £3.00 per lodge per month and an annual option under Settings from that site's pricing FAQ. Delegates, including a Treasurer, get their own login at no extra fee. The features page states a lodge-category cash book, subscriptions and dining fees against members, who has paid dues, and email reminders from the app. The help pages describe financial years, dues levels, invoices, batch invoicing, sending invoices and reminders, prepaid credits toward next year's invoice, bills, bank accounts, payments linked to bank transactions, reports, and a year-end close. That is a serious cheap desk. Do not pretend it cannot invoice or remind. Those pages still do not describe Gift Aid or GASDS reclaim, an HMRC-ready export, a member payment portal, or waivers and this-year instalment balances as first-class states on one dues year. Buy The Working Tools if minutes, a register, invoices, and that cash book are the job.

LodgeAccounting, at lodgetreasurer.co.uk, calls itself a Treasurer's working system. On 11 September 2026 the homepage still described raising and allocating subscriptions, dining charges and receipts, visible bank accounts with allocation workflows, a full nominal set through trial balance, profit and loss, balance sheet and year-end close, and reconciling member and dining balances to control accounts. That is a real books product. No price was published. Gift Aid and GASDS were not described. If the only pain is nominals and year-end evidence, read their site and ask them. Omit what they have not said.

Lodgical publishes summons, subscriptions, dining, and a charity steward role, with a trial or demo. Price was not published on the pages we read. Gift Aid was not mentioned. Lodge Master 5 publishes meetings, menus, summons, and Stripe payments, without a public price on the pages we used. This article will not give either product treasurer features those pages do not state.

Once the lodge owns the job, software is a way to stop the year living in one brother's laptop. LodgePay is the tool at the end of that decision, not the opening slogan. Its Treasurer pages already state the product facts we are allowed to use: online collection of subscriptions, dues cycles and reminders, a charitable split on annual subs, webhook-verified card status through Mooov, and a report of dues posture. Members can see what they owe in the portal. Waivers stay on the record. Instalments, if the lodge offers them, sit on the same year. Festive-board collections sit on the meeting. A CSV bank import matches lines to payment intents and leaves unmatched items visible.

Published prices, as on the pricing page we re-checked on 11 September 2026: Essentials from £149 a month billed annually, which is £1,788 a year, or £169 if billed monthly. Complete from £229 billed annually, or £259 monthly. Group from £349 for two lodges, then £119 per extra. Province from £2,000 a month plus £35 per lodge, typically £4,500 a month. No setup fee. A free 30-minute walkthrough or sandbox with lodge branding. Brand is LodgePay, one word. Office in Chelmsford.

Mooov processes cards. Status is webhook-verified, so a succeeded card is already known before the statement arrives. Standard processing fees pass through at cost. We will not invent a fee table. Cash and bank transfers still need recording against the same rows. The processor is not the dues year. It is one way money arrives.

The published Gift Aid illustration of £1,125 does not pay that Essentials year. The lodge files any HMRC claim. LodgePay prepares an export. It does not take the reclaim. Those figures do not raise the year for you. A £5 cash book the lodge actually operates beats a fuller platform nobody opens. If you only need a secretary operating system, invoices, and that cash book, The Working Tools may be the cheaper correct answer. If you only need nominals and a balance sheet, read LodgeAccounting. If the meeting must sit with dues, the bank, and Gift Aid on the same record, book a walkthrough and ask the questions at the end of this page.

That is the end of the pitch. If the year is not owned, buying a platform will not collect a pound. If a successor cannot open paid, unpaid, waived, left, and on a plan without last year's inbox, January will still be a chase.