How a Secretary runs summons and RSVP without WhatsApp

Send one summons from one sitting list, collect ceremony, dining, and apology as separate answers, carry dietary notes into a kitchen count the Steward can lock, record dining money on that same meeting if the lodge charges, and write attendance back so the year is not retyped.

That is a Secretary week that closes. The Steward gets a number he can give a caterer. The Treasurer, if dining is charged, can see who still owes. Next year's Secretary can open last year's meetings without asking who kept the WhatsApp admin rights. Software is useful only if it makes those answers cheap. A summons PDF that cannot collect a reply is still a file. A chat that cannot produce a dining count is still a chat.

The summons is the formal notice of the meeting: when, where, and what the lodge has chosen to print. How you word the inner business is the Secretary's craft, not this article's. We will not write an agenda for you.

Operationally, three things have to be true or the week fails. The notice is the same object you later print. The send list is the sitting list, not last installation's spreadsheet. Send history lives on that meeting, so you can see who was mailed, who bounced, and whether a late correction went to everyone.

If those three sit in different places, you already have two summonses. One is the PDF on the Secretary's laptop. The other is the version someone forwarded with a different time in the first line. Members should open the same record, on a link or in a member portal, rather than hunting a forwarded chain. Print from that record if the lodge still wants paper. Two sources of truth is how the wrong date reaches the dining room.

The usual year looks like this. The Secretary writes a summons in a word processor. He emails a PDF to a list that is two installations out of date. Someone drops the file into a WhatsApp group. Replies arrive as ticks, voice notes, and private messages to the Secretary, the Steward, and whoever happens to be in the chair. Dietary notes sit in a fourth thread. Guests are a name said in the car park.

None of those channels is wicked. All of them are wrong as the register. Split inboxes mean the Steward counts a different yes from the Secretary. A brother who replied to the wrong officer is treated as silent. A brother who changed phones never saw the file. The kitchen number is then a hope, locked on Saturday morning from memory.

WhatsApp also destroys history. The group is renamed. Admin rights sit with a brother who no longer opens the chat. Last year's dining answers are gone. A PDF can be a beautiful notice, and it still cannot collect a structured reply, separate ceremony from dining, carry a standing dietary note, or write attendance back to the member. The test is handover. When that Secretary is in the chair, can a successor still see who was mailed, who dined, and who sent an apology, without asking for screenshots?

Brethren can sit the meeting and not dine. Guests can dine without sitting the meeting. A brother can send an apology and still need to be visible on the list. If your RSVP is a single yes, the Steward is guessing and the attendance roll is lying.

Capture those answers separately. Ceremony is who intends to sit. Dining is who intends to eat. Apology is a third state, not a missing reply. A blank is work you have not done. Do not invent apologies at year end to tidy the file, and do not treat silence as a dining no the Steward can trust.

Guests sit on the same meeting, with a name and a dining answer. A forwarded email to the Secretary is how guests disappear from the count. Keep visitors on the meeting, not on member history. That split is ordinary hospitality, not a ruling from UGLE or a Province. The festive-board software guide on this site starts from the same split, because the kitchen feeds the people who are eating.

Asking again every month is how you serve the wrong plate to the same brother twice a year. Store dietary needs on the member. Carry them into each dining RSVP so he can confirm or change the line. Allow a one-off note for a guest.

That is hospitality and a kitchen count, not pastoral care. Give the caterer the plate constraint. Keep medical essays off a committee chat. Do not confuse silence with 'happy with the main'. A blank note means you have not asked. Let the brother correct his own line on the reply link or in a portal. Members and visitors both eat. The dietary-notes guide on this site stays on that Steward job. This page only needs the rule that the note lives once, then travels with every dining answer.

Treat the meeting as a close, not a scramble on the afternoon. The week has a start, a chase, a lock, and a write-back. If any of those live in a different brother's phone, the week does not close. It just ends.

Some lodges do not charge for dining. The Secretary week still has to close. The Steward still needs a number. Attendance still has to survive the year. Charging is a second job on the same record, not a reason to skip the first. If you do charge, dining money in a different product from the summons is how month-end becomes archaeology.

Gift Aid is a third job, and only if the night produced a named gift or cash the lodge already knows how to reclaim. A typical 30-member lodge illustration already on the LodgePay Gift Aid page is £1,125 a year (£225 from dues, £900 from eight festive boards) plus GASDS on cash up to £8,000. Those figures assume the nights were recorded. A WhatsApp yes never became a line, so it cannot be reclaimed. The attendance guide on this site is the write-back half of the same close.

The Working Tools is a secretary operating system. We checked the public homepage and pricing page on 28 August 2026. Pricing is £5.00 a month per lodge, extra lodges at £3.00 a month, and a 30-day trial. The same public site lists creating and managing events, tracking attendances, creating table plans, and generating summons and minutes. That is a fair cheap digital secretary desk. Those pages did not describe Gift Aid or GASDS reclaim. We will not invent it.

Lodgical (lodgical.app) is a web-based membership system for Secretaries and Treasurers. On 28 August 2026 the public site listed Membership, Meetings, Officers, Summonses, and Minutes; a Summons Reply for members; and Bank Accounts, Subscriptions, and Dining Dues for Treasurers. Members can reply to summonses. Summonses can be sent from a dedicated lodge email account. They offer a demonstration lodge and a free trial. Price was not published on the pages we checked.

Lodge Master 5 (lodge-master.co.uk) loaded for us on 28 August 2026. The public page describes meetings, attendance, festive-board menus, hosting the summons, a public sign-up link, dietary requirements, and Stripe. It did not publish a price. Contact on the page is john@lodge-master.co.uk. In their own words, a +1 guest must register as a visitor until the next major release. We will not add a feature their page does not state.

Lodge Manager (lodgemanager.co.uk) publicly describes membership information, sending lodge material, meeting reminders, a multi-lodge view for members, and a prompt for who still needs a postal copy. On 28 August 2026 the public homepage we fetched did not confirm a price. An older blog line about yearly fees could not be reconfirmed. Do not quote a Lodge Manager price in committee from this page.

Buy a cheap secretary desk if the pain is the Secretary's hours and the lodge is happy to keep money elsewhere. The Working Tools at £5 a month is a rational buy for summons generation, a register, and a table plan. Lodgical is a rational look if you want members to reply to a summons and the Treasurer to keep dining dues in the same product, once you have asked them for a price they do not publish. Lodge Manager may be enough if the brief is membership records, reminders, and a postal chase list.

That is not faint praise. A lodge drowning in paper notices is allowed to buy the tool that publishes those jobs. Stay honest about the edge. If unpaid dining, a bank that does not match, and unclaimed Gift Aid are the actual complaints, you are buying a different job. The compare page for The Working Tools on this site stays on that distinction: a secretary OS versus a lodge OS.

Some lodges will run a cheap desk and a separate payments habit for a while. If you try that, keep one source of truth for who is dining and one for who has paid. Two lists with two spellings of every name is how the Steward and the Treasurer argue in the car park.

Once the lodge owns the summons week, software is a way to stop it living in one brother's phone. LodgePay treats the meeting as the spine: date, location, meeting type, agenda, attendance. From that record the Secretary can view, edit, print, and send the summons. Send history is kept. Members open a tokenised public link or the member portal.

RSVPs split ceremony and dining. Guests, dietary notes, payment status, and apologies sit on one event. Dietary preferences stored on the member carry forward. The Steward sees confirmed counts with cut-off dates and chase reminders. Attendance writes back to the member history. That is the same record the Secretary used for the send.

If the lodge also wants the night's money and Gift Aid on the same meeting, dining can sit beside the RSVP. Card payments go through Mooov. Standard processing fees pass through at cost. Gift Aid uses the declaration already on the member. The lodge files the HMRC pack. LodgePay does not take the reclaim. Published prices, as on the pricing page: Essentials from £149 a month billed annually (or £169 monthly), Complete from £229, Group from £349, Province from £2k a month plus £35 per lodge (typically £4,500 a month). Those figures do not write the summons.

If you only need a summons PDF, a cheap register, and a table plan, The Working Tools may be enough. If you want members to reply inside a Secretary and Treasurer desk, ask Lodgical for a price. If the brief is courses, children's menus, and a Perfect Table Plan export, read Lodge Master 5 and ask John. We will not invent a price. If the meeting must sit with money and Gift Aid on the same record, book a LodgePay walkthrough and ask the questions at the end of this page.