A treasurer's report by hand: the statement and the reconciliation
Every small club, committee or association has somebody who has to stand up once a quarter and account for the money. The hard part is never adding up receipts — it's proving the total is right, and knowing exactly what to say if the closing balance doesn't match the bank statement. Both checks are plain arithmetic, done in a fixed order.
The method
Start from the opening balance and add every category of income, then subtract every category of expenditure:
calculated closing balance = opening balance + total income − total expenditure
Then compare that calculated figure against the actual closing balance on the bank statement:
difference = calculated closing balance − bank statement closing balance
If the difference is zero, the report reconciles and the numbers can be read out as final. If it isn't zero, the honest move is to state the difference exactly and list the ordinary explanations — a cheque written but not yet presented, a transfer that crossed the period boundary, a transaction never entered, an amount typed with the wrong sign — without picking one and forcing the books to match. A report that quietly plugs a gap to look tidy is worse than one that shows the gap.
A worked example
A residents' association starts the quarter with £850.00 in the bank. Over the period: subscriptions bring in £620.00 and a raffle brings in £145.50. Expenditure: hall hire £180.00, insurance £96.00, printing £42.75. The bank statement shows a closing balance of £1,275.75.
- Total income:
620.00 + 145.50 = 765.50. - Total expenditure:
180.00 + 96.00 + 42.75 = 318.75. - Net change:
765.50 − 318.75 = 446.75. - Calculated closing balance:
850.00 + 446.75 = 1,296.75. - Compare to the bank's figure:
1,296.75 − 1,275.75 = 21.00.
The books and the bank disagree by exactly £21.00. That's not an error to hide — it's a fact to report, alongside the likely cause (commonly a cheque or transfer that hasn't cleared yet) and a note that nothing has been adjusted to force a match.
What this doesn't include
This is arithmetic, not an audit. It doesn't verify that every transaction actually happened, check receipts against the ledger, or meet any accounting standard — treat it as the statement a committee reads out, not accounts prepared or independently examined by an accountant. Nothing here is tax, filing or accounting advice.
Run your own numbers
The free Treasurer's Report tool takes a period's transactions, an opening balance and a closing balance, and produces the category breakdown and reconciliation automatically, entirely on your device.