How a Treasurer matches the lodge bank every month

Take the lodge bank as the source of truth, bring every line of the month into the books, match each line to a payment you already know or to an exception you can explain, and do not call the month closed while unmatched items remain unseen.

That is the whole reconciliation. Dues, dining, raffle, alms, refunds, hall hire, Provincial fees, and the odd hall deposit all land in the same account, or in the few accounts the lodge actually holds. The statement does not care which officer collected the money. The Treasurer does, which is why each line must point at a record or sit on an unmatched list someone will open again.

A lodge that runs this well does not spend the week before installation rebuilding six months from memory. Month-end is a confirmation that the books already agreed. If it is a reconstruction, the process was not monthly. It was annual panic with a bank login.

The statement is what the bank will show a second officer, an auditor, or a successor. It has dates, amounts, descriptions, and a closing balance. It does not know who dined, who was waived, or which night the cash lump belongs to. Those facts live in the ledger. The ledger is every claim the lodge has already made about money: a dues row marked paid, a dining cover recorded, a cash paying-in written against a meeting, a refund noted, a hall invoice filed.

The two documents are not rivals. They are a check on each other. When they agree, the Treasurer can report a number that can be shown. When they disagree, the bank wins on what the lodge actually holds, and the work is finding why the books said something else. Adjusting the statement to match a hope is how a year goes missing. Adjusting the books without a reason a successor can read is how handover fails.

Three other places often pretend to be the ledger. A card-processor dashboard shows cards that succeeded or failed. A cash book in a secretary system shows that someone typed that money moved. A Steward's night list shows who was expected to dine. Each of those is useful. None of them is the month until it meets the bank. Card money that has not yet settled is not in the lodge account. Cash still in a tin is not in the lodge account. A typed cash-book line with no bank tick is a claim, not a proof.

Two officers should be able to see the same statement and the same ledger. A Treasurer who reconciles from a personal download that nobody else can open has built a private version of the truth. The next Treasurer will not inherit it. The Master cannot check it. Committee will hear a number that cannot be shown. The match is a public officer job, even when the wider lodge does not see every brother's arrears.

Opening and closing balances for the month are not decoration. They are the frame. If the books start the month on a different figure from the bank, every later tick is theatre. Fix the brought-forward position first. Then import the month. Then match. Then prove the close.

The brought-forward figure is last month's closing balance, not a number remembered from a committee paper. If last month was never closed, this month cannot honestly open. That is why a lodge that skips January and February always finds March expensive. The missing months are not gone. They are sitting in the opening balance as a lump the Treasurer can no longer explain.

A usable close has three numbers that agree, or a written reason why they do not. The bank's closing balance. The books' cash position for that account. The sum of opening balance plus matched credits minus matched debits, with unmatched lines still listed rather than forced into a balancing figure. If you need a miscellaneous plug to make the three meet, the month is not closed. The plug is a leftover with a polite name.

Do not treat uncleared cheques, pending card settlements, or cash still in a tin as reasons to edit the bank. Record them as what they are. A cheque written and not yet presented is a book fact waiting for a later statement. A card that succeeded last night and has not settled is a payment the processor already knows, waiting for a bank credit. Cash counted on the night and not yet paid in is a meeting fact waiting for a paying-in line. The statement will catch up. The books should not invent a line the bank has not seen.

Most UK lodge banks will export a statement as a file the Treasurer can download. That file is the month. Import it. Do not retype thirty lines from a PDF because retyping is how a £20 dining cover becomes £2 and nobody notices until year-end. Do not copy a screen of transactions into a notebook and call that an import. The point of the file is that a second officer can later open the same month and see the same lines.

A usable import has a date, an amount, and a description for every line, plus a running or closing balance you can check against the bank. Credits and debits must keep their sign. A dining refund that lands as a debit must stay a debit. A dues transfer that lands as a credit must stay a credit. If the export drops the sign, or merges fees into a net figure you cannot later explain, stop and use an export the bank actually supports.

Import the whole month, including the lines you already recognise. The point of the file is completeness, not novelty. If you only type the mysteries, you will never prove that the known dues and the known dining actually arrived. The match is a proof, not a junk drawer. A Treasurer who only imports the leftovers is still reconstructing. The known lines are the ones that make the close defensible.

Do the import while the month is still in living memory. A Treasurer who waits until March to import January will not remember which festive board the cash lump was. The brother who paid by transfer with no reference will not remember either. Fresh statements are cheap. Archaeology is not. A lodge that imports in the first fortnight of the next month still has the Steward, the dining list, and the paying-in book in reach. A lodge that waits for year-end has none of those.

Some lodges keep a current account and a separate charity account. Some keep a dining account beside the general fund. Some still have a deposit account for money they do not intend to spend this month. Those are lodge choices. This page will not invent a rule that says you must, or must not, split them. It will say: import each account on its own, and do not paste them into one list because the Treasurer is in a hurry.

Mixing the dining account and the charity account in one paste is how both become untrustworthy. A credit that belongs to alms will be ticked against dining. A hall hire debit will be argued as a charity expense. Committee will hear a healthy dining night that was actually a charity transfer. The successor will inherit two accounts that only make sense in one brother's head.

Transfers between lodge accounts are not income. They are movement. A transfer from the current account to the charity account should match as a pair: a debit on one import, a credit on the other, on dates close enough for the bank. Do not treat the arriving credit as a new gift. Do not treat the leaving debit as a cost of the night. If you cannot see both sides, leave both unmatched until you can.

If only one officer has online access to one of the accounts, the lodge does not have two accounts. It has one public account and one private pot. Two officers should be able to download, or at least to see, every account you intend to report. A charity account that only the Charity Steward can open is how Gift Aid and the bank start living on different calendars.

A known payment is a dues row, a dining cover, a named gift, a recorded cash paying-in, or any other intent the lodge already raised. The import's job is to attach the bank line to that intent. When they match, both sides can stop arguing. The brother is paid. The meeting has its night. The statement has its tick.

Match on what you can defend: amount, a date close enough for clearing, and a reference a human would accept. Do not match a £45 dining cover to a £45 Provincial fee because the numbers agree. The description exists for a reason. If two lines could fit, leave them unmatched until you know. A wrong tick is worse than an unmatched line. A wrong tick tells committee a story that is tidy and false.

One bank line can cover several cash items if you bagged the night as a lump. That is normal. The paying-in should still point at a meeting, and the meeting should still show dining, raffle, and alms as separate counts. The bank sees one credit. The books still owe committee a split. Matching the lump to the meeting is the bank job. Keeping the split on the meeting is the night job. Those are not the same tick.

One member payment can arrive as one line. That is the easy case. Tick it and move on. The hard cases are the ones without a reference, the ones that arrived twice, the ones that arrived for the wrong year, and the ones that never arrived at all. Those are why the unmatched list exists. A Treasurer who only enjoys the easy ticks is not doing the month. He is doing the pleasant half of it.

Annual subscriptions are the predictable credits. They should already sit on the year you raised, which is the job written out in how a Treasurer collects lodge dues. This page only needs what the bank will ask. A dues credit should attach to a named member and a named year. A credit with no name is not yet a paid row. It is an unmatched line with a dues-shaped amount.

Card dues should already know they succeeded before the statement arrives. The bank line is then a settlement, often net of a processing fee or followed by a separate fee debit. Record the fee as a cost of taking cards. Do not shrink the brother's paid row to the net figure so the year looks short. Do not inflate the dining or dues total to hide the fee. Use the figure the processor actually charged. We will not invent a fee table here.

Bank transfers are where references die. A brother pays from a joint account with no lodge reference, or pays two years in one hit, or pays the dining cover and the sub together. Leave the line unmatched until you can attach it. Do not guess because the amount is close to this year's sub. Close is how last year's late payer is marked paid for this year, and a genuinely unpaid brother is left alone.

A waiver does not produce a bank line. That is the whole point of a waiver. The member row still exists. The year still exists. The reason still exists. The bank will not mention him. If you delete the row to tidy the unpaid list, the books will look as if he paid, or as if he never belonged. Committee needs the waived count beside the unpaid count. The bank match should not be used to hide a waiver, and a waiver should not be used to explain a missing credit that was never a waiver.

A dues refund is a debit that must point at the original payment. The brother overpaid, resigned after paying, or was charged twice. Write the reason on the member and on the refund line. The bank debit is not a mystery expense. It is the opposite of a credit you already ticked. If you cannot find the original credit, you are not ready to call the debit a refund. Leave it unmatched.

Dining, raffle, and alms are the same evening. If they post to three places, month-end is archaeology. The night job is already written in how a lodge runs festive-board money. The bank job is narrower. Every credit that came from that night must point at that meeting, and the meeting must still hold the split the bank cannot see.

Card dining often arrives as one settlement, or as several member charges that later land as a batch. The books should already know which covers succeeded. The statement confirms that the batch landed. If a cover failed, it is not unpaid in the same way as a brother who never tried. It needs a retry or another method, still on that meeting. Do not mark the meeting short and then forget why.

Cash is why Treasurers still import statements in a lodge that thinks it is card-first. The Steward counts dining cash. The raffle pot is counted. The alms tin is counted. Two officers write the figures on the meeting before anyone goes home. Those counts travel to the bank as one paying-in, or as two, depending on how the lodge bags the night. The paying-in reference should carry the meeting date. A counter credit that says only 'cash' is an unmatched line until you attach it.

Guests and shortages are where nights rot. A visitor paid in cash that was never written on the meeting. A diner left without settling. Record the shortage on the meeting the same night. Do not hide it inside a round paying-in that makes the bank look tidy. Some lodges do not charge for dining. The Treasurer still needs the night if raffle or alms moved. Attach that credit to the meeting, keep the names on named gifts, and keep the unnamed cash as a total for that date.

When a brother pays by card, the processor should tell the books that the payment succeeded or failed. The Treasurer should not be typing 'paid' from a screenshot. The bank import is then a confirmation that the settlement landed, not the first news that the cover was taken. A succeeded card that has not yet settled is already a payment. It is not yet a bank line. Both facts can be true at once.

Fees will appear as a separate deduction or as a net settlement, depending on the processor and the bank. Record them as what they are: a cost of taking cards. Do not bury them inside the dining total so the night looks healthier than it was. Do not invent a fee schedule in the minutes. Use the figure the processor actually charged. This page will not publish a lodge card-fee table, because we do not have one that is true for every lodge.

Cash and cheques are why the import still matters even when most brethren pay by card. They will never arrive with a processor confirmation. They arrive as a paying-in, a counter credit, or a cheque that clears three days later. Those lines stay unmatched until you attach them. A cheque from a brother dated the night, presented the next week, is still that brother's payment. The date on the statement is the clearing date. The date on the books is the intent. Match them as a pair, and do not chase him in the gap.

Do not treat the processor as a second bank. It is a slice of the month: the cards that went through it. Hall hire, Provincial levies, refunds paid by the lodge, cash, cheques, and transfers never appear there. A Treasurer who reports the processor dashboard as the lodge position is reporting a slice as if it were the meal. Committee will nod. The auditor will not.

Money that leaves the account is as much the month as money that arrives. Hall hire, Provincial fees, catering, charity grants, officer expenses, and refunds to members are all debits the statement will show. Each needs an owner. A debit with no invoice, no meeting, and no member is an unmatched line, not a rounding difference.

A refund to a member must point at the original payment. Failed and refunded cards are not unpaid in the same way as a brother who never tried. A failure needs a retry or another method. A refund needs the original payment and the reason. Both should be visible on the member or the meeting, so the bank line for the refund is not a mystery in month six. If the processor reversed a card and the bank later shows a debit, those are two views of one event. Tick them as such. Do not invent a second refund.

A duplicate credit is not a windfall. A brother paid twice, or the processor settled twice, or a transfer was sent again after a delay. Leave the second line unmatched until you know which it is. If it is a true duplicate, the lodge either refunds it or holds it as a credit against a later year. Write that decision. A duplicate ticked as this year's dining will make the night look strong and the later refund look like a loss.

Charge-backs are rare in a lodge and still need a record. The original payment, the reversal, and the reason should sit together. Do not delete the original tick to tidy the month.

An unmatched line is not a rounding error. It is money the lodge cannot yet explain. Leave it on a list the Treasurer opens every week. Do not file it under miscellaneous. Do not delete it because the balance looks close enough. Close enough is how a year goes missing. A list that is empty because leftovers were hidden is not a clean month. It is a month nobody can audit.

Common leftovers are honest. A brother paid with no reference. The hall charged a deposit. A refund landed. A Provincial levy came out. Someone paid next year's dues in this month. A guest paid a dining cover from an account the lodge does not recognise. Each of those has an owner and a next action. Write the owner on the line. A list with no owners is a list nobody will clear.

Ignoring a line is a decision, not a disappearance. If the lodge truly will not allocate it, say so, with a reason a successor can read. An ignored line that still sits in the history is safer than a vanished one. Committee can ask. The next Treasurer can disagree. A deleted line cannot be questioned. The test is simple: if the Master asked tomorrow why that £40 left the account, could you show him without opening a private email?

Do not wait for year-end to look at the leftovers. A line from January that is still unmatched in November is no longer a payment problem. It is an evidence problem. The brother will not have the receipt. The Steward will not remember the guest. Match while people still know. A lodge that reviews unmatched lines in the first fortnight of the next month still has a month. A lodge that reviews them at installation has a rumour.

Gift Aid is a reclaim on eligible gifts, not a second set of books. The pack says which payments were gifts, which of those had a valid declaration, and what the charity will file. The bank says what actually arrived and left. Those two documents must be able to meet. They are not the same document. This page will not rewrite the reclaim desks. The split sits on how a Treasurer splits dues so Gift Aid can be claimed. The year sits on how a lodge reclaims Gift Aid on dues, alms, and donations. The product facts sit on Gift Aid.

A payment that never hit the bank, or never hit a recorded cash line, should not sit in the pack as if it were a completed gift. A tin that was never written against a meeting cannot be reclaimed later by hoping the paying-in looks about right. A dues row marked paid from a screenshot, with no matching credit and no recorded cash, is not yet a gift the charity can defend. The bank match is how the Treasurer knows the gift existed as money, not only as a hope.

The HMRC reclaim, when it lands, is a later bank credit. It is not this month's dining. It is not this year's dues. It should be matched to the claim you filed, with the period written on the line. LodgePay's published position, when you get to the tool, is that the lodge files and LodgePay does not take the reclaim. Do not treat an expected reclaim as cash in hand. Do not spend it in the books before the statement shows it.

LodgePay already publishes a typical 30-member illustration of £1,125 a year: £225 from dues and £900 from eight festive boards, plus GASDS on cash up to £8,000. That figure lives on the Gift Aid and pricing pages. It is an illustration, not your books, and it is not a bank forecast. Essentials billed annually is £1,788. The illustration does not pay the subscription. Do not tell committee that a typical lodge reclaim covers the software, and do not invent a bank-fee table to make the comparison look better.

A Relief Chest, if the lodge uses one, is a destination for charitable money. A transfer to a Chest is a bank debit that should point at a decision you can already explain. It does not replace the match, and it does not assemble the Gift Aid pack.

A month is closed when the imported lines are matched or owned, the books' balance agrees with the bank, and the Treasurer can show both to another officer. That should be a short sitting. If it is a weekend, the month was not kept. Confirmation means you are checking a match that already happened, not reconstructing the festive board from a catering invoice and a memory of the raffle.

Dining, dues, and alms should already sit on their own records before you open the statement. The statement is the tick. It is not the first draft of the year. If you are raising last month's dining list from the bank descriptions, the night was not recorded. If you are inventing who paid dues from the credits that look about right, the year was not raised. The bank cannot repair a missing ledger. It can only refuse to agree with one.

Bring a second pair of eyes to the unmatched list. The Master does not need every brother's arrears. He does need to know that the account was looked at, that leftovers have owners, and that the reported balance is the bank's balance. A Treasurer who cannot show that is asking the lodge to take a number on trust. Trust is not a close.

Write a short month note a successor can read. Opening balance. Closing balance. How many lines imported. How many matched. How many still unmatched, with owners. Any ignored line, with a reason. Any transfer between lodge accounts. That note is not minutes of the meeting. It is the Treasurer's close. Keep it with the import. If the only record of the close is a sentence in committee that 'the books were satisfactory', the lodge has a compliment. It does not have a month.

Treat the match as a calendar, not a spring panic. If any of these steps live only in one brother's download folder, the year does not close. It just ends.

Handover is the test. The desk fails when the lodge lives in one brother's download folder. The next Treasurer inherits a password, a colour-coded spreadsheet, a paying-in book that does not match the ledger, and a promise that 'it all went in'. Committee hears a number that cannot be shown. The year then starts late because the new Treasurer is reconstructing the old one.

A usable handover is dull. The successor should open the last closed month without a meeting. He should see the imported file, or a stored copy of it. He should see which lines were matched, to which dues rows and which meetings. He should see the unmatched list with owners and dates. He should see ignored lines with reasons. He should see opening and closing balances that agree with the bank. If any of those require a phone call, they were never the lodge's books. They were a diary.

Access is part of the inheritance. Two officers should already be able to download the statements. The bank mandate should not be the sitting Treasurer's personal login and nothing else. This page will not invent a UGLE rule about signatories. It will say: a lodge that cannot produce a statement after one brother stands down does not have a Treasurer system. It has a person.

Waivers, instalment plans, and pending refunds travel with the year. They are not side notes in a WhatsApp chat. A brother waived in March is still waived in June. A brother on a plan still has a remaining balance. A refund promised and not yet paid is a debit the new Treasurer must expect. If those facts live only in the outgoing Treasurer's memory, the first month of the new year will reopen the last six.

Write the handover as if you will not be available. Where the imports live. Where the closed-month notes live. Who else can see the bank. Which leftovers are still open. Which Gift Aid period has been filed, and which reclaim has not yet landed. The successor should be able to import the next month on the same desk.

Year-end should be twelve closed months, plus the Gift Aid pack for the periods you filed, plus the unpaid and waived lists for the dues year. It should not be a holiday week spent rebuilding the bank from memory because nobody imported after Easter. If year-end is archaeology, the monthly process was a slogan.

An auditor, or a second officer acting as one, will ask questions a monthly match already answers. Can you show the bank balance at year-end? Can you show how you got there from the opening balance? Can you point at the large credits? Can you explain the leftovers? Can you show that dining cash was counted on the nights it was taken? Can you show that a waived member was waived, not forgotten? If those answers need a reconstruction, the trail was not kept.

Keep the imports. Keep the closed-month notes. Keep the paying-in references. Keep the refund reasons. Keep the Gift Aid submission with the payments it used. LodgePay's published product copy, when you get to it, states seven years for Gift Aid records. Follow HMRC if their published retention period differs for your charity. Bank statements and books should be kept for the period your own officers and advisers already use. This page will not invent a Provincial retention rule.

Do not tidy the year by deleting unmatched lines so the close looks clean. An auditor would rather see an owned leftover than a perfect figure with no history. Committee would rather hear that a £40 credit from March is still unidentified than hear a round number that nobody can open. Tidiness is not the same as truth. The monthly unmatched list is how the year stays honest.

If the lodge changes Treasurer at installation, year-end and handover collide. That is normal. Close the last full month first. Then hand over the open month as an open month, not as a mystery.

Named competitors are real. Buy the one that publishes the job you actually have. We re-checked public pages on 11 September 2026. We will not invent a feature, a price, or a bank-import claim those pages do not state.

The Working Tools is a secretary operating system with a real Treasurer's cash book. Public pricing on 11 September 2026 was still £5.00 a month, with a 30-day trial. Delegates, including a Treasurer, get their own login and permission sets at no extra fee. Extra lodges are offered at a reduced cost. The public pricing page we opened did not state that reduced figure, so this page will not invent one. The treasurer feature page describes lodge-category income and outgoings, subscriptions and dining fees against members, who has paid dues, email reminders from the app, charity funds kept separate from general funds, year-end figures for auditors, branded PDFs, dining numbers from the Event Planner, and officer expenses with receipts. Help pages describe financial years, invoices, bills, bank accounts, and payments that can link to bank transactions. That is a serious cheap desk. Those pages still do not describe a lodge-bank CSV import that leaves unmatched lines visible as a working list, webhook-verified card processing, or a Gift Aid reclaim pack. Buy it if minutes, a register, and that cash book are the job. Tick the bank yourself if that is the process you will actually run.

LodgeAccounting, at lodgetreasurer.co.uk, calls itself a Treasurer's working system. On 11 September 2026 the homepage described raising and allocating subscriptions, dining charges and receipts, visible bank accounts with allocation workflows, a full nominal set through trial balance, profit and loss, balance sheet and year-end close, and reconciling member and dining balances to control accounts. That is a real books product. No price was published. Gift Aid was not described on the pages we used. If the only pain is nominals, control accounts, and year-end evidence, read their site and ask them. Ask how leftovers stay visible after allocation. Omit what they have not said.

A secretary cash book can be ticked against a paper statement. A books product can allocate receipts to ledgers. Neither fact is an insult. It is a reason to be precise about the monthly match this page is for: a complete import, ticks you can defend, and leftovers that remain a working list. Do not award any tool a CSV match its own public pages do not claim.

Once the lodge owns the job, software is a way to stop the month living in one brother's download folder. LodgePay is the tool at the end of that decision, not the opening slogan. The Treasurer pages already state the product facts we are allowed to use: CSV import from the lodge bank, lines matched to payment intents, unmatched items left visible, festive-board collections on the meeting, dues runs on the year, and a treasurer report of income, dues posture, reconciliation, and Gift Aid reclaimable, every line tied to its payment intent. Month-end is confirmation, not archaeology.

Card payments go through Mooov. Status is webhook-verified, so a succeeded card is already known before the statement arrives. Standard processing fees pass through at cost. We will not invent a fee table. Cash, cheques, hall hire, Provincial levies, and anything that did not come through the processor are why the import exists. The processor is not the books.

Published prices, as on the pricing page on 11 September 2026: Essentials from £149 a month billed annually, which is £1,788 a year, or £169 monthly. Complete from £229 billed annually, or £259 monthly. Group from £349 (two lodges, then £119 per extra). Province from £2,000 a month plus £35 per lodge, typically £4,500 a month. No setup fee. A free 30-minute walkthrough, or a sandbox with lodge branding. Brand is LodgePay, one word. Office in Chelmsford.

Those figures do not import the month. A £5 cash book the lodge actually operates beats a fuller platform nobody opens. If you only need a secretary operating system and that cash book, The Working Tools may be enough. If you only need nominals and a balance sheet, read LodgeAccounting. If the meeting must sit with dues, the bank, and Gift Aid on the same record, book a LodgePay walkthrough and ask the questions at the end of this page. If unmatched lines are still being hidden in a miscellaneous tab, buying a platform will not make the bank tell the truth. It already does. The books have to listen.