Guide

The team treasurer's year-end checklist

The season's over, but the treasurer's job has one last chapter: closing the books cleanly. Done well, it takes an afternoon, keeps everyone happy, and sets up next year's treasurer for success. Here's the checklist.

1. Collect any outstanding fees

Chase the last unpaid installments before you close anything. It's much harder to recover money once the season has ended and families have moved on, so make this the first thing you do.

2. Record every last expense

Make sure every bill, reimbursement, and bit of game-day cash is logged — including anything a coach or manager fronted out of pocket and hasn't been paid back yet. Nothing should still be living in someone's inbox or wallet.

3. Reconcile to the bank

Match your records against the final bank statement. Tick off everything that's cleared and confirm your books and the bank balance agree to the cent. If they don't, now's the time to find the difference — not at the AGM.

4. File every receipt

Make sure you have a receipt or invoice for every expense, stored somewhere a parent could audit if asked — including things the association paid for directly. A complete receipt file is your proof that every dollar was spent properly.

5. Work out refunds (if there's a surplus)

If you collected more than you spent, the fair thing is usually to return the surplus to families — split evenly, or in proportion to what each paid. Calculate it to the cent so no one's short-changed, and document how you worked it out.

6. Produce the year-end financial statement

Put together a clear summary: total in, total out, where the money went by category, and the closing balance. This is what you present to parents and hand to the board or association — and it's what proves the season was run honestly.

7. Hand off to next year's treasurer

Pass on the closing balance, the records, the receipt file, and a short note on anything quirky about your team's finances. A clean handoff means the next volunteer starts from a real position instead of a shoebox — and that good turn tends to come back around.

Make year-end a non-event

Every item on this list is painful if your records live in a tangle of spreadsheet tabs, and almost automatic if they don't. RosterLedger reconciles as you go, calculates refunds for you, keeps the receipt file tidy, generates the year-end statement in a click, and carries the closing balance forward — so closing the season is a non-event, not a lost weekend.

Not sure the role is even worth keeping in a spreadsheet? See why spreadsheets fail team treasurers.