The gliding club treasurer's year

This is a calendar for a volunteer treasurer at a member-run soaring club, plus the handover list that almost never gets written down. Adjust the months if your season runs differently; the sequence matters more than the dates.

The shape of the year

A club treasurer's year has three distinct phases and they need different things from you.

• Off-season (roughly November–February): thinking time. Rates, budgets, renewals, the AGM. This is when decisions get made and it is the only part of the year when you have the attention to make them well.
• Season (March–October): processing time. Invoices out, money in, chase the stragglers. Very little thinking; a lot of not letting things slide.
• Year end: reconciliation, reporting, and finding out whether the decisions in phase one were right.

Month by month

November — close the season, count what happened

Get the season's actuals in front of you while people still remember it. Total launches, split by method. Total tow income against total towing costs. Membership at the start of the year against membership now, and the difference broken into joiners and leavers rather than a net figure — a club that gained ten and lost eight has a very different problem from one that gained two and lost none.

This is also the moment to work out what a launch actually cost you this year, using real numbers rather than last year's assumption. Ours is a whole chapter on its own, and the launch cost calculator will do the arithmetic.

December — draft next year's budget

Build it from the launch count you actually flew, not the one you hoped for. Most club budgets are optimistic in exactly one place — the number of flying days — and every per-launch figure depends on it.

Model two versions: the season you expect, and a season that is 25% wetter. If the wet version does not work, you have found next year's real problem in December rather than in August.

January — rates, and the conversation about them

Dues and tow fees for the coming year. If they are changing, this is when the membership needs to hear it and why — not in the same email as the AGM agenda, and not as a line item somebody notices on their first invoice of the season.

A rate rise explained in December with the arithmetic behind it lands very differently from the same rise discovered in April.

February — AGM, insurance, and the audit

Accounts presented, questions answered. Insurance renewal often falls near here and is worth genuinely shopping rather than rolling — aviation cover is one of the few club costs where the market moves and the incumbent assumes you will not check.

Whatever your club calls its year-end review — audit, independent examination, "Dave looks at it" — schedule it now rather than when your governing documents say it is overdue.

March — open the season cleanly

Annual dues out. New rates live in whatever system produces invoices. Last season's outstanding balances resolved before new charges start landing on top of them, because a member who starts the season already owing money is a member who quietly stops flying.

April to September — the processing months

Invoice on a fixed cadence and keep it. Monthly is normal; the specific choice matters far less than that it never slips, because the day it slips is the day members stop expecting it, and a bill that arrives unpredictably gets paid unpredictably.

Two habits worth building:

• Chase early and unemotionally. A polite note at 30 days works. At 120 days you are having a much harder conversation about somebody's membership, with someone who is now embarrassed and avoiding you.
• Reconcile monthly, not annually. Finding a discrepancy in May when the flying is fresh is a five-minute conversation. Finding it in November is an afternoon of archaeology.

Mid-season — the one check most clubs skip

Around July, compare actual launches to date against the budget. If you are well behind, you have half a season left to react — reduce spending, add flying days, or tell the committee early that the year will be short.

The alternative is finding out in November, when nothing can be done about it and the only remaining option is the reserves.

October — close out

Final invoices, chase what is outstanding while the season is fresh, and start the November list again.

Reserves: the question nobody asks until it is urgent

Most clubs hold reserves without a stated policy, which means the balance is whatever history left behind rather than a decision anyone made.

A club can usually name three things it is saving for:

1. The engine. A known price at a known interval — see the tow cost chapter. This is the one clubs most often fail to accrue and it is entirely predictable.
2. The next tug or winch. Decades away and therefore permanently deferrable, which is how clubs end up fundraising in a hurry.
3. A bad year. Enough to cover fixed costs through a season that does not happen — insurance, hangarage and inspections do not care whether you flew.

Writing down a target for each, even a rough one, converts "we have some money in the bank" into something a committee can actually make decisions against.

The handover list

This is the part that is not written down anywhere, and it is the reason a new treasurer's first year is harder than it needs to be. If you are handing over, write this out. If you are taking over, ask for it explicitly.

• Every account, and who can sign on it. Including the dormant one with the old bank and the card in somebody's wallet.
• Every recurring payment and what it is for. There is nearly always one nobody can explain.
• Insurance: broker, renewal date, what is covered, what is explicitly not.
• Who has authority to spend what without asking. Usually understood, rarely written.
• Members on any special arrangement — payment plans, hardship terms, historic agreements. This is the most sensitive item on the list and the one most often lost entirely at handover, which is how a member gets chased for something a previous committee agreed to waive.
• The logins. Bank, accounting, club system, the email address invoices come from.
• What is owed, to whom, right now.
• The awkward stuff. The long-standing debt everyone has stopped mentioning. The arrangement with the neighbouring farmer. Write it down; it does not survive an unwritten handover and it always resurfaces.

Two habits that make the job smaller

Record flights as they happen, not at month end. A month's worth of paper log reconstructed on the last Sunday of the month is where errors come from, and it is the single largest time cost in the role.

Let members see their own balance. A visible running balance removes most billing queries before they are asked, and it means nobody is surprised by an invoice — which is most of what makes chasing unpleasant.