📑 Year end — the club's accounts

Accounts → Year End produces the statements your club needs at the end of its financial year, built from the ledger you have been keeping all along. Which statements you get depends on two settings — your year end date and your accounting basis — both under Settings → Accounting.

📅 Your year end date

Set the day and month your financial year ends; the new year starts the day after. Most UK clubs use 31 March, 30 September or 31 December, but it is whatever your rules say. Choosing day 31 always means “the last day of that month”, so February comes out right without you having to think about leap years.

⚖️ Cash basis or accruals basis

This is the one question that decides everything else, and it comes down to when a figure counts.

• Cash basis — you record money on the day it actually moves in or out of the bank. A subscription counts when it is paid; the electricity counts when the direct debit goes out. It is what most small clubs do, it matches the bank statement, and it is very hard to get wrong.
• Accruals basis — you record income in the year it was earned and a cost in the year it was incurred, whatever date the money moved. A subscription for next season taken in February belongs to next year. A March electricity bill that lands in April is this year’s cost. Stock still on the shelf at the year end is an asset, not an expense.

Put simply: cash basis answers “what went through the bank?”, accruals answers “how did the club actually do?” Accruals gives the truer picture and is the only way to show what is owed to and by the club — at the cost of a handful of figures at the year end that cash basis never asks for.

📄 What you get

• On the cash basis — a Receipts and Payments Account: money in by category, money out by category, the surplus or deficit, and the bank balance at each end of the year, with last year alongside for comparison.
• On the accruals basis — an Income and Expenditure Account and a Balance Sheet. The income and expenditure account starts from the money that moved and then shows each adjustment as its own line, so anyone reading it can follow exactly how the cash book became the accounts.

Both can be printed straight from the screen or downloaded as a CSV to hand to whoever examines your accounts.

🧮 Where the accrual figures come from

Pavilion already knows most of what a balance sheet needs, and works it out for you:

• Debtors — unpaid member charges, plus any unpaid sales invoices.
• Creditors — unpaid supplier invoices, plus expense claims approved but not yet paid.
• Stock — valued at cost from the till’s stock records.
• Bank — your opening balance plus every ledger entry up to the year end.

The rest has no source in the data and is typed in under Year-end adjustments: prepayments, income received in advance, accruals for bills that have not arrived, and fixed assets. Every box shows the figure Pavilion worked out beside it — leave a box empty to use that figure, and fill it in only where you know better, such as carrying a number forward from last year’s signed accounts.

✅ “The balance sheet balances”

Pavilion converts the cash book to accruals using the standard method, which makes the surplus for the year exactly equal the movement in net assets. So a correct set of figures balances on its own — there is no balancing figure quietly hiding a problem. If it does not balance, Pavilion says so and tells you by how much; almost always it means the accumulated fund brought forward is not last year’s closing figure.

Common questions

Which basis should our club use?

If the club is not a registered charity and the committee is content with a simple statement, cash basis is usually right and far less work. Registered charities in England and Wales may use receipts and payments accounts while gross income stays below a threshold set by the Charities Act — £250,000, rising to £500,000 for accounting years ending on or after 30 September 2026 — and must prepare accruals accounts above it. Charitable companies must always use accruals. Scotland and Northern Ireland set their own limits. Pavilion is not an accountant and this is general information rather than advice: if you are unsure, ask your independent examiner.

Can we change basis part way through a year?

You can, but think twice. The comparison with last year stops being like for like, and an examiner will ask why. The natural moment to change is at a year end, and if the club is a charity it is worth a word with your examiner first.

Nothing appears on the Year End screen.

The statements are built from the accounts ledger, so if nothing has been entered for that year there is nothing to report. Check the year picker at the top of the Accounts screen is on the year you mean — the financial year is named after the calendar year it starts in.

The balance sheet is out by a few pounds.

Net assets and the accumulated fund disagree. In nearly every case the accumulated fund brought forward is not last year’s closing figure — put last year’s signed figure into that box, or clear the box entirely and let Pavilion work it out from the opening position. If it still will not balance, check the opening bank balance under Settings → Accounting is the balance before your very first ledger entry, not the balance at the start of this year.

Our bank balance on the report does not match the statement.

The figure is your opening balance plus every ledger entry up to the year end, so a mismatch means either something is missing from the ledger or the opening balance is wrong. Use Reconcile to find the difference. If you need the accounts to show the real bank figure while you sort it out, put it in “Bank balance per the statement at the year end” under Year-end adjustments — but treat that as a note to yourself, not a fix.

What is a prepayment, and do we have any?

Something you have paid for that belongs to next year — insurance paid in March covering the year ahead is the usual one. It comes out of this year’s costs and sits on the balance sheet as an asset. Many small clubs genuinely have none; if so, leave the boxes empty.

Members have paid next season's subs early. Where do they go?

That is income received in advance. On the accruals basis it is not this year’s income — it is money you are holding on their behalf, so it comes out of income and appears as a liability on the balance sheet. Put the total in “Income received in advance at the year end” and remember to enter the same figure as the brought-forward amount next year.

Are these accounts ready to file or hand to an examiner?

Treat them as a well-prepared draft. Every figure comes from your own records and the arithmetic is checked, but Pavilion cannot know about anything you have not recorded, and it is not an accountant. Check the figures against the bank before they go to a meeting or an independent examiner.