A lodge Treasurer has three jobs, and software is the last decision, not the first.

This URL is the product. The blogs are the guides.

Treasurers who land here usually want one of two things. They want to know whether a product will keep the three answers cheap, or they want the method for running a year. Keep this page if you are choosing a desk. Open the blogs if you need the calendar, the handover test, and the longer survey of other tools. The titles and descriptions are different on purpose so a search result does not send you to the wrong one.

• How a Treasurer actually runs the lodge books is the umbrella year: the three questions, the successor test, and what other tools publish.
• How a Treasurer collects lodge dues without a January chase is the dues year: raise, send, record, waive, and remind only the genuinely late.
• How a Treasurer matches the lodge bank every month is the statement: import, match, and leave leftovers visible.
• How a lodge reclaims Gift Aid on dues, alms, and donations is the reclaim year. The product facts for that job sit on Gift Aid.
• How a lodge runs festive-board money on the same night is the dinner money: dining, raffle, named gifts, and the tin, written before anyone goes home.

A cash book that cannot produce the unpaid list is still a diary. A payments app that cannot show unmatched bank lines is still a payments app. Software is useful only when it makes the three answers cheap to keep and leaves leftovers honest. This page will not describe ceremony, signs, words, or anything private to the Craft, and it will not invent a rule from UGLE or a Province. Minutes are a lodge record of business. They are not a dues evidence file.

The three committee questions

A lodge that runs well can answer these in committee without a week of reconstruction. Who has paid this year's dues. What hit the bank last month. What Gift Aid is still unclaimed. Those are officer questions, not a software brochure. If producing them takes a weekend of archaeology, the books are a diary. They are not a Treasurer's system.

The three questions are one desk seen from three sides. Who has paid is the member ledger. What hit the bank is the same money, matched. What Gift Aid is unclaimed is the charitable slice of those payments, plus eligible cash, plus a declaration where HMRC needs one. If the three live in three places they drift by the third meeting. Dues live in a spreadsheet. Dining lives in a chat. The bank lives in a login only one officer has. Gift Aid lives in an April panic.

This is small-organisation finance, not ritual. The lodge is a membership body with a charity stream, a dining night, and a current account. Treat it that way. A successful lodge owns the desk first, then chooses a tool that makes those three answers cheap to keep. Size is not the argument. A thirty-member lodge still produces a dues year, festive boards, and a current account. Handover is the argument.

The dues year

Annual subscriptions are the predictable income. The work is not inventing a new fee. It is raising the year, sending it, seeing who is paid, and chasing only the genuinely late. If that list takes a weekend, January will always be a personal email campaign from one officer's inbox. The longer collection method is How a Treasurer collects lodge dues. This page stays on what the product desk has to hold so committee can hear the list twice.

Raise from the sitting membership. Put four facts on the year before a request goes out: the amount, the due date, who is in scope, and whether any part of the sub is charitable. Mark honorary members, country members, mid-year joiners, and resignations on the row. Do not delete people to tidy the unpaid count. 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 even if last year's spreadsheet never heard of him.

A lodge can split a subscription into a membership portion and a charitable portion. Gift Aid applies to the donation, with a valid declaration, not to a private club fee. The lodge, or its charity, decides that split. Neighbouring lodges may split differently. Copying them without papers is not diligence. The split belongs on the dues year so the unpaid list and the reclaimable figure are looking at the same rows. How the split is decided belongs on the Gift Aid product page and the Gift Aid blogs. This desk only needs it written before anyone is asked to pay.

Members pay against that year. Card, bank, and recorded cash have to hit the same record or the reminder will train people to ignore it. A reminder to a brother who has already paid is worse than no reminder. If a payment is sitting unmatched on the bank, that brother is not late. The books are. Waivers stay visible: a named member, a named year, a reason a successor can read. Instalments, if the lodge offers them, sit on the same year with a remaining balance. A WhatsApp note is not a plan. Paid, unpaid, waived, and on a plan: four states, one list.

Honorary and country arrangements are lodge decisions. This page will not invent a rule for them. 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 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. Next year is a new raise.

Reminders are a cadence, not a personality. The Master should already have seen who will be chased before anyone is written to. Send on an agreed rhythm. Keep a record of what went and when. Do not invent a new tone for each late brother. Courtesy is cheap when the record is true. The failure mode is a Treasurer who chases a leaver, misses a joiner, and tells committee the lodge is about the same as last year.

On this product desk the year is raised in bulk, reminders go from the same list, and the Treasurer can open paid, unpaid, waived, and instalment rows without rebuilding January from an inbox. That is the dues job. It is not the whole Treasurer year.

Bank match: month-end is confirmation

The bank is the truth. The ledger is a hope until it matches. Import the lodge CSV. Match lines to known payments. Leave unmatched items visible. Do not hide them in a miscellaneous tab. Do not call the month closed while leftovers remain unseen. The longer monthly method is How a Treasurer matches the lodge bank every month. This page only needs the rule that month-end is confirmation, not archaeology.

A known payment is a dues row, a dining cover, a named gift, or a recorded cash paying-in. Match on amount, a clearing date, and a reference a human would accept. Do not match a dining cover to a Provincial fee because the numbers agree. One bank line can cover a night bagged as a lump. The bank sees one credit. The books still owe committee a split the meeting already holds: dining, raffle, alms.

Card money should already know it succeeded, because status is webhook-verified. Fees are a cost of taking cards. Cash, cheques, hall hire, and Provincial levies never arrive with a processor confirmation. That is why the import exists. A card that succeeded last night and has not settled is a payment the processor already knows, waiting for a bank credit. Cash counted on the night and not yet paid in is a meeting fact waiting for a paying-in line. The statement will catch up. The books should not invent a line the bank has not seen.

Opening and closing balances for the month are the frame. If the books start the month on a different figure from the bank, every later tick is theatre. Fix the brought-forward position first. Then import the month. Then match. Then prove the close. If last month was never closed, this month cannot honestly open. A lodge that skips January and February always finds March expensive. The missing months are not gone. They are sitting in the opening balance as a lump the Treasurer can no longer explain.

An unmatched line is money the lodge cannot yet explain. Give it an owner. Ignoring a line is a decision with a reason, not a disappearance. Two officers should be able to see the same statement and the same leftover list. A Treasurer who reconciles from a personal download that nobody else can open has built a private version of the truth. The next Treasurer will not inherit it. Committee will hear a number that cannot be shown.

A usable close has three numbers that agree, or a written reason why they do not. The bank's closing balance. The books' cash position for that account. The sum of opening balance plus matched credits minus matched debits, with unmatched lines still listed rather than forced into a balancing figure. If you need a miscellaneous plug to make the three meet, the month is not closed. The plug is a leftover with a polite name. Do the import while the month is still in living memory. A Treasurer who waits until March to import January will not remember which festive board the cash lump was.

On this product desk a CSV from the lodge current account is imported and matched to payment intents. Unmatched lines stay on the desk. That is the bank job. It is still not the reclaim.

Gift Aid and GASDS sit on the same desk, and this page will not rewrite them

A cash book that cannot split a sub or hold a declaration will not produce an HMRC pack. The reclaim job already has its own product desk and its own blogs. This page will not rewrite them. The Treasurer still owns the numbers that go into the pack. If the lodge files Gift Aid, the treasurer report should show reclaimable amounts with each line tied to a payment. If it cannot, you will rebuild the pack in April.

Read Gift Aid for the four reclaim records: a valid declaration on the named donor, a decided charitable split on dues, the festive-board tin counted on the night, and an HMRC pack a successor can open. Read How a lodge reclaims Gift Aid on dues, alms, and donations for the year. Those pages already say who files, who keeps the money, and what the published illustration is. Stay here when the pain is that the reclaimable figure will not sit next to the unpaid list and the bank match.

HMRC's Gift Aid scheme lets a UK charity reclaim 25 pence for every £1 given by a UK taxpayer who has made a valid declaration. That is public HMRC practice, not a lodge by-law, and this page will not invent a UGLE rule about it. A membership fee is not automatically a gift. Named festive-board gifts belong on the same meeting as the RSVP. Unnamed cash may fall under the Gift Aid Small Donations Scheme, subject to HMRC's published conditions. LodgePay's public copy states an allowance of up to £8,000 a year. We are not adding a figure. GASDS does not replace declarations on dues and named gifts.

The registered charity files with HMRC and receives the reclaim. LodgePay produces an HMRC-ready export and keeps lodge files. LodgePay does not file for you. LodgePay does not take the reclaim. A destination for later giving, including a Relief Chest the lodge may already trust, does not assemble those records on the lodge's behalf. The Gift Aid desk already sits beside that choice. This page will not invent Chest fees or a Provincial rule that says a lodge must, or must not, use one.

The published illustration already on the Gift Aid and pricing pages is £1,125 a year for a typical 30-member lodge: £225 from dues and £900 from eight festive boards, plus GASDS on cash up to £8,000. That is an illustration. It is not your books. Those amounts assume the lodge actually recorded the payments and the declarations. A tin that never became a line cannot be reclaimed. A sub with no split cannot be claimed in full. A gift with no declaration is not Gift Aid. Run the same arithmetic on your own membership and meeting count.

Festive-board money on the meeting

Dining, raffle, and alms are the same evening. If they post to three places, month-end is archaeology. The Treasurer should open one meeting and see the night's money. The longer same-night method is How a lodge runs festive-board money on the same night. This page stays on why that night belongs on the Treasurer desk at all.

Four streams usually move in the same room. Dining is the meal cost. The raffle is money taken for tickets or a bottle pledge. Named gifts are donations a brother makes with his name attached. Unnamed cash is the plate, the box, or the tin that has no donor list. Card and cash are how those streams arrive. They are not extra streams of their own. If those four homes are not written down, the first tin that fills will swallow the rest.

The usual failure looks harmless while the room is still full. A brother pays two covers in cash and buys raffle tickets from the same wallet. Another brother taps a card for dining and drops coins in the alms tin. A guest settles later by bank transfer with no reference. By Sunday the Treasurer has one card total, one paying-in hope, and a Steward who is sure the numbers were different. Named gifts keep a name. Cash that never became a line cannot be matched later, and it cannot be reclaimed.

Some lodges do not charge for dining. The Treasurer still needs the night if a collection moved. The Secretary and Steward job of summons and kitchen counts has its own pages. The Treasurer's slice is what the night took, on the same meeting the rest of the lodge already used. An unpaid cover is still a cover once you have accepted it. Dining money that lives in a different app from the summons will never match the Steward's count.

On this product desk festive-board collections are recorded on the meeting and attributed to members. That is the night job. It feeds the bank match and the reclaim. It is not a separate hobby.

A year this desk can keep cheap

Treat the desk as a calendar, not a spring panic. The blogs already write the method in full. This page only needs the product test: if any of these steps still live in a different officer's phone after you buy a tool, you bought a diary with a login.

• At installation or year start: confirm who owns the books, the dues amount and due date, the charitable split if any, whether instalments are offered, and who files Gift Aid.
• In the first fortnight: raise the year from the sitting list and send the request. Confirm it arrived. Do not wait for the first dinner.
• On every meeting: dining, raffle, and alms sit on that meeting. Cash is counted the same night. Named gifts keep a name.
• Monthly: import the bank CSV. Match what you can. Own every unmatched line. Clear payments that arrived without a tick before you send a reminder.
• On the agreed cadence: remind only the unpaid who are not waived and not current on a plan.
• When you file: export the Gift Aid pack from the same payments, have a second officer read the totals, file, and store the submission with the declarations.
• At handover: the successor opens the year, the last closed month, and the reclaimable figure. He does not need the sitting Treasurer's inbox.

That calendar is officer work. Software is useful only when each step opens on the same desk. If January still needs a personal campaign, if March still needs a reconstruction, or if April still needs a folder from 2019, the three committee questions are not cheap yet.

The treasurer report

The report a Treasurer opens before committee should show income, dues posture, reconciliation, and Gift Aid reclaimable. Every line on that report should tie back to its payment. If the reclaimable figure cannot be shown from the same payments, you will rebuild the pack in April. If the unpaid list cannot be shown from the same year, you will rebuild January from an inbox. If the bank leftovers cannot be shown, you will rebuild the month from a download folder.

Two officers should be able to see the same books. The wider lodge sees reports, not every brother's arrears, unless your own standing orders say otherwise. Size is not the argument. A thirty-member lodge still produces a dues year, festive boards, and a current account. The test is whether the Master can hear a number that can be shown twice.

On this product desk the treasurer report is that view: income, dues posture, reconciliation, and Gift Aid reclaimable, each line tied to its payment intent. That is what committee is actually asking for when it asks the three questions.

Handover is the test

The desk fails when the lodge lives in one officer's spreadsheet. The next Treasurer inherits passwords, a colour-coded tab, and a paying-in book that does not match the ledger. Committee hears a number that cannot be shown. A usable set of books has four positions that can disagree in public. The member ledger says who owes what. The meeting ledger says what each night took. The bank says what arrived. The charity position says what is reclaimable. If those four live in four places, they drift. If they live in one officer's head, they will not survive June.

Write the year as if the next Treasurer will open it with no handover meeting. The sitting list the dues run was sent to. The amount and the due date. The charitable split, if the lodge uses one. Closed months, with leftover bank lines still visible. Declarations on members, not in a 2019 folder. Waivers with a reason. Instalment plans with a remaining balance. The last festive board with dining, raffle, named gifts, and cash counted. The last Gift Aid export, if the lodge files.

Two officers should be able to see the same books before anyone stands down. Invite the successor while the year is still running. Let him open last month and name a leftover. Let him open the unpaid list and see a waiver. If that only works while the sitting Treasurer is on the telephone, the lodge does not yet have a desk. It has a person.

On this product desk those records sit together. The successor opens the year, the last closed month, and the reclaimable Gift Aid figure. He does not need the sitting Treasurer's phone.

Paper, a spreadsheet, and a £5 cash book

Named tools are real. We re-checked public pages on 14 September 2026. We will not invent a feature, a price, or a Gift Aid claim those pages do not state. Buy the desk that publishes the job you actually have. A tool the lodge actually operates beats a fuller platform nobody opens.

Paper is honest until the year turns. A roll, a paying-in book, and a tin can run a small lodge while the same Treasurer stays in the chair and remembers every credit. The failure is handover, not goodwill. The next Treasurer inherits a biscuit tin and a story. Committee hears a number that cannot be shown twice. Paper is free until that weekend of reconstruction, and then it is the most expensive desk in the building.

A spreadsheet is a better diary. It can hold a dues year if someone types every credit, every waiver, and every leftover. It can hold a bank tick if someone imports or retypes the statement. It cannot, by itself, stop two officers holding two files. The colour coding that makes sense to the sitting Treasurer is a foreign language in June. A reminder sent from a personal inbox still trains the lodge to ignore the chase when the tab is stale. A spreadsheet that cannot produce unmatched bank lines, or that hides them in a miscellaneous tab, is still a reconstruction waiting to happen.

The Working Tools publishes a Treasurer's cash book inside a secretary operating system. Public pricing on 14 September 2026 was £5.00 a month, with a 30-day trial. Extra lodges are offered at a reduced cost. Their support FAQ has published £3.00 per extra lodge per month. Delegates, including a Treasurer, get their own login and permission sets at no extra published fee. An annual payment option is described in their subscription help. The public treasurer page describes lodge-category income and outgoings, subscriptions and dining fees against members, who has paid dues, email reminders from the app, charity funds kept separate from general funds, year-end figures for auditors, branded PDFs, dining numbers from the Event Planner, and officer expenses with receipts. That is a serious cheap desk. Do not pretend it cannot show who has paid or send a reminder.

Those same public treasurer and pricing pages still do not describe Gift Aid or GASDS reclaim, or an HMRC-ready export. Their help documentation mentions bank accounts and payments that link to bank transactions. A CSV import matched to payment intents is not described on the public treasurer or pricing pages we read. We will not award Gift Aid reclaim to a cash book that does not publish it. Buy The Working Tools if minutes, a register, and that cash book are the job. Compare The Working Tools stays on that distinction.

LodgeAccounting, at lodgetreasurer.co.uk, still calls itself a Treasurer's working system. On 14 September 2026 the homepage 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 was not described on the pages we used. If the only pain is nominals and year-end evidence, read their site and ask them. They are not in the table below because this desk is comparing paper, a spreadsheet, the published cash book, and this product, not every nominal ledger on the public web.

Treasurer jobs versus paper, a spreadsheet, a cash book, and this desk

Read the table as jobs, not as marketing claims. A blank cell on another tool is not an insult. It means their public pages, on the date we checked, did not describe that job, or that the job lives in a folder the next Treasurer will not find.

What the product costs, and why the reclaim does not pay it

Published prices, as on the pricing page, re-checked on 14 September 2026: Essentials from £149 a month billed annually, or £169 monthly. That annual Essentials figure is £1,788. 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. There is no setup fee. A 30-minute walkthrough, or a sandbox with lodge branding, is the usual way to see the desk before anyone commits.

The published typical 30-member Gift Aid illustration is £1,125 a year: £225 from dues and £900 from eight festive boards, plus GASDS on cash up to £8,000. Essentials billed annually is £1,788. The illustration is smaller than that Essentials year. The reclaim does not pay the subscription. Do not treat a typical lodge figure as if it covered the plan. Buy the desk because the three committee questions stay cheap to answer, not because a typical-lodge figure covers the invoice.

Those figures do not raise the year. A £5 cash book the lodge actually operates beats a fuller platform nobody opens. If you only need a secretary operating system and that cash book, compare The Working Tools and buy the cheaper desk. 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 the walkthrough and ask the questions at the end of this page.

Where LodgePay sits, after you own the desk

Once the lodge owns the three questions, software is a way to stop them living in one officer'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: dues cycles and reminders, including a charitable split on annual subscriptions; festive-board collections attributed to members on the meeting; CSV bank import matched to payment intents, with unmatched lines left visible; and a treasurer report of income, dues posture, reconciliation, and Gift Aid reclaimable, every line tied to its payment intent.

Card payments go through Mooov. Status is webhook-verified, so a payment does not sit pending because someone forgot to refresh a dashboard. Standard processing fees pass through at cost. We will not invent a fee table. The processor is not the books. The books are the dues year, the meeting, the bank match, and the reclaimable figure.

The Gift Aid export is HMRC-ready. The lodge files. LodgePay does not take the reclaim. Brand is LodgePay, one word. The office is in Chelmsford. That is the product. It is still the last decision.

Short answers a Treasurer actually asks

Is this the same as the Treasurer blog guide?

No. The Treasurer blog guide is the long how-to. The dues year is How a Treasurer collects lodge dues. The statement is How a Treasurer matches the lodge bank. The reclaim year is How a lodge reclaims Gift Aid. The night is festive-board money. This URL stays the product desk. It tells a Treasurer what LodgePay actually does for the three committee questions, what it costs, and what to ask on a walkthrough.

What does LodgePay actually do on the Treasurer desk?

It runs dues cycles and reminders, including a charitable split on annual subscriptions. It records festive-board collections on the meeting. It imports a bank CSV and matches lines to payment intents, with unmatched lines left visible. It produces a treasurer report of income, dues posture, reconciliation, and Gift Aid reclaimable. Cards go through Mooov, webhook-verified, with processing fees passed through at cost. The Gift Aid export is HMRC-ready. The lodge files. LodgePay does not take the reclaim.

Is a £5 cash book a waste of money?

No. The Working Tools publishes a Treasurer's cash book at £5.00 a month. That is a real cheap desk for subscriptions, dining fees, who has paid, and email reminders. Buy it if minutes, a register, and that cash book are the job. Their public treasurer and pricing pages, re-checked on 14 September 2026, do not describe Gift Aid or GASDS reclaim, or an HMRC-ready export. A cash book can record that someone paid. That is not the same as a dues year, a bank match, and a reclaimable figure on one record.

Should we buy LodgeAccounting instead?

If the only pain is nominals, trial balance, profit and loss, a balance sheet, and year-end evidence, read lodgetreasurer.co.uk and ask them. Those pages still publish no price. They did not describe Gift Aid on the pages we used on 14 September 2026. If the pain is dues, the bank match, the festive-board night, and the reclaim, you need those jobs on one record.

Who files Gift Aid, and who keeps the reclaim?

The registered charity files with HMRC and receives the reclaim. LodgePay prepares the HMRC-ready export and keeps lodge files. It does not file for you and does not receive the money.

Can we claim Gift Aid on the whole annual subscription?

Only on the portion that is genuinely a charitable donation, with a valid declaration. A membership fee is not automatically a gift. The lodge decides the split. Do not copy another lodge's figure without looking at your own resolution and charity status. The longer split method is on the Gift Aid desks, not on this page.

Does the Gift Aid illustration pay for LodgePay?

No. The published typical 30-member illustration is £1,125 a year (£225 from dues and £900 from eight festive boards), plus GASDS on cash up to £8,000. Essentials billed annually is £1,788. The reclaim does not pay the subscription. The figure is an illustration, not your books.

What does LodgePay cost?

As on the pricing page: Essentials from £149 a month billed annually, or £169 monthly. That is £1,788 a year on the annual Essentials rate. Complete from £229. Group from £349. Province from £2,000 a month plus £35 per lodge. Mooov processing fees pass through at cost. There is no setup fee.

Do we need software if the lodge is thirty members?

You need a successor who can open the books. Thirty members still produce a dues year, festive boards, and a current account. Size is not the argument. Handover is. A weekend of reconstruction for a small lodge is still a weekend.

Who should see the ledger?

The Treasurer, usually the Charity Steward for the charity slice, and whoever the lodge has authorised. The wider lodge sees reports, not every brother's arrears, unless your own standing orders say otherwise. This page will not invent a UGLE rule about that.

Can we keep a cheap secretary OS and run money elsewhere?

Yes, if you keep one source of truth for who has paid and one for what hit the bank. Two lists will drift. Compare The Working Tools stays on that distinction: a secretary operating system versus a lodge operating system.

Questions that puncture a demo

Bring last month's bank CSV and last year's unpaid list. Ask these out loud. If the answers need a second spreadsheet, you are still buying a diary.

1. Open last month. Show unmatched bank lines. What happens if I ignore one?
2. Raise this year's dues with a charitable split. Who is unpaid, waived, or on instalments?
3. Open the last festive board. Dining, raffle, cash alms, named donation. One screen or three exports?
4. Show Gift Aid reclaimable tied to payments, not a separate spreadsheet.
5. If the Treasurer stands down in June, what does the successor actually inherit?
6. Show a reminder that will not go to a brother whose payment is sitting unmatched on the bank.

A 30-minute lodge walkthrough from Chelmsford

If the three jobs belong on one record, book a 30-minute lodge walkthrough. Email hello@lodgepayments.co.uk or use Book a demo. LodgePay is based in Chelmsford. Bring the unpaid list and a bank CSV. Software is still the last decision. The walkthrough is how you test whether this desk keeps the three answers cheap.