The treasurer's question nobody can answer quickly
At the finance committee the treasurer asks a simple question: how much hall hire is outstanding? The bookings secretary has a spreadsheet of who booked what. The treasurer has a bank statement with lines like 'HALL SAT' and 'J PATEL PARTY'. The office has a cash box with an envelope in it from a family who paid in notes on the day. Somewhere there is a list of damage deposits, and one of them should have gone back to a family three weeks ago.
Nobody can answer the question in the meeting. It becomes an action point, and someone spends Saturday morning ticking bank lines against bookings with a highlighter.
Where hall income falls through the gaps
Hire income at a church, mosque, gurdwara, temple or synagogue is usually modest per booking but steady, and it matters for building running costs. The trouble is that each booking goes through several hands.
| Step | Usually done by | Where it is recorded |
|---|---|---|
| Booking agreed | Bookings secretary or office | Diary or spreadsheet |
| Invoice or request for payment | Secretary or treasurer | Word template, email |
| Payment received | Bank, card reader or cash on the day | Bank statement, cash book |
| Deposit taken | Secretary | Separate list, if anywhere |
| Post-event check | Caretaker | A comment in passing |
| Deposit returned or kept | Treasurer | Bank transfer, often late |
Regular hirers add their own muddle. A weekly exercise class might pay monthly in arrears, a language school might pay termly, and a small community group might be charged a reduced rate agreed by the committee years ago. When those arrangements live in someone's memory, the invoice either never goes out or goes out at the wrong rate.
Bank references do not help. Hirers type whatever they like, and the bank statement shows a surname and a date that may not match the booking name at all.
The cost of loose hire payments
Unpaid hires are the obvious loss, and for a building that relies on hire income to pay for heating and insurance, a few missed payments a term is a real gap. Less obvious is the time. The treasurer and secretary are usually volunteers with jobs and families, and hours spent matching payments are hours taken from them.
Deposits cause the most awkward conversations. A hirer who has to chase their deposit feels badly treated, and if a deposit is kept because of damage, the reason needs to be written down at the time, not remembered later. Without a record, the committee cannot show it acted fairly.
How we connect bookings to money
What we build treats every booking as having charges attached, and follows each charge through to payment.
- Each room has its rates, with the concessions your committee has agreed, such as member rates, community group rates or charges waived for the congregation's own groups.
- When a booking is approved, the charges and any deposit are calculated and a payment request goes to the hirer with a unique reference to quote.
- For regular hirers, we generate the monthly or termly invoice from the sessions actually booked, so a cancelled week is not charged.
- Bank transactions come in through your bank's feed or your accounting software, such as Xero or QuickBooks, and are matched to bookings by reference, amount and name, with unclear ones placed in a short list for the treasurer to decide.
- Card payments taken online through Stripe or a card reader are linked automatically.
- After the event, the caretaker records the condition of the hall on their phone. The deposit is flagged for return, or held with a written reason and photographs.
Cash taken on the day is entered against the booking by whoever takes it, with a note of who witnessed it, following whatever cash handling routine your trustees have set.
What the treasurer sees at the next meeting
Before the finance meeting the treasurer opens one page: hire income this quarter, bookings unpaid and how old they are, deposits held and deposits due back. The unpaid list has three names on it. One is a regular hirer who has been sent a reminder automatically; the other two are one-off hires from last week with payment not yet due.
The deposit for the Saturday party went back on Tuesday, because the caretaker ticked 'hall left clean' on Sunday morning. When a deposit was held last month because a table was broken, the note and photo were there when the hirer asked why.
None of this changes your accounting system. Income still ends up coded in Xero, QuickBooks or whatever your independent examiner or accountant works from. The difference is that the hall figures arrive already matched.
Does this sound like your hall?
- You cannot say today how much hall hire is unpaid.
- Bank payments for hires arrive with references nobody recognises.
- Deposits have been returned late, or nobody is sure whether one was returned.
- Special rates for particular groups are agreed but not written down anywhere central.
- Cash from hirers sits in the office until someone has time to bank it.