Nobody is trained for this job and almost nobody is paid for it. A club treasurer is handed a bank login, a spreadsheet and a season's worth of other people's assumptions, and is expected to know what is coming. The work splits cleanly into three: the weekly banking, the monthly arrears chase, and the once-a-year report and filing. This page sets out each of them in the order they land, and says which parts a US club with tax-exempt status has to be careful about, because that is the part a handover almost never mentions.
Every week: match the money to a name
Bank transfers arrive with references like PAYMENT and JSMITH and nothing at all. The weekly job is to match each one to a member and a fee tier, because an unmatched payment is indistinguishable from a member who has not paid. Doing it weekly takes minutes; doing it in March for the whole season takes a weekend and produces arrears chases sent to people who paid in October, which is how a volunteer treasurer loses the committee's confidence.
Every month: the arrears list, and who is allowed to see it
The arrears list is the treasurer's main instrument and the club's most sensitive document. It should be a list of names and amounts, produced from the member record rather than typed, and it should go to one or two officers rather than to a committee of twelve. The chase itself works better from the membership secretary or the section head than from the treasurer, because it is a conversation about membership rather than about money.
Once a year: the report the committee can actually read
Income by source, expenditure by category, the bank balance at the start and the end, and a note on anything unusual. That is the whole of it. The common mistake is a printout of the bank statement, which answers no question anybody has. The second most common is a surplus presented as success without saying what it is being held for, which is how clubs end up with reserves nobody can explain and a subs increase nobody will vote for.
The filing a US exempt club owes, and the two limits behind it
A club recognized under section 501(c)(7) is exempt on member income, not on everything. The IRS states that a social club may receive up to 35 percent of its gross receipts from nonmember sources including investment income, and that within that amount no more than 15 percent of gross receipts may come from nonmember use of the club's facilities and services. Where those levels are exceeded the IRS says all facts and circumstances are considered. Separately, the IRS states that small exempt organizations are generally eligible to file Form 990-N if their annual gross receipts are normally $50,000 or less. A treasurer who knows those two numbers before the bar takes a wedding booking has done the job.
The handover, which is the part that decides the next treasurer's year
Bank mandate, the list of who owes what, the fee tiers and when they were last changed, the filing history, and the login to whatever holds the member record. A handover that is a folder of PDFs and a verbal summary means the incoming treasurer spends the first season reconstructing the last one. Write it while you are doing the job rather than in the week you resign.
Other questions people ask
Is a club treasurer personally liable for the club's debts?
It depends entirely on how the club is constituted and in which state, and it is a question for the club's own adviser rather than a page here. What is worth knowing is that the answer differs between an unincorporated association and an incorporated club, and most volunteers have never been told which theirs is.
Does a club treasurer need accounting software?
Not for the accounts, which for most clubs fit in a spreadsheet. The pressure comes from the arrears list, which needs the member record, the fee tier and the payments joined; that join is what club management products sell.
How much time does the job take?
An hour a week if the banking is matched weekly, plus two or three evenings around the annual meeting. It expands without limit if the matching is left, which is the single thing an incoming treasurer should be told.
What happens if a club goes over the IRS nonmember income limits?
The IRS says that where the permitted levels of nonmember income are exceeded, all facts and circumstances are considered in determining whether the club continues to qualify for exemption. It is not an automatic loss of status, and it is the point at which a club should take its own advice rather than read a web page.