Accounting settings, explained

Settings → Accounting. Four things live here, and only the first two change how figures are worked out. The rest is wording on paperwork.

📅 Financial year end

The month and day your books close. Every report that says “this year” counts from the day after it. Most clubs use 31 March or 31 December; whichever your accounts have always used is the right answer, and changing it mid-year will make last year’s totals move.

⚖️ Accounting basis — the one worth understanding

The only question it answers is when a figure counts.

• Cash basis — it counts on the day the money moves. A subscription invoiced in March and paid in April is April’s income. Simpler, and what most small clubs do.
• Accruals basis — it counts on the day the club earned or owed it. That same subscription is March’s income whenever it is paid. What an examiner will expect above a certain size, and what makes year-on-year comparisons honest.

If nobody at the club knows which you use, you use cash. Ask your treasurer before changing it: it moves figures between years, so the two years either side of the change will not agree with anything printed before.

💷 Opening balance

What was actually in the bank on the first day of the current financial year. Pavilion cannot know this, and every reconciliation figure is measured from it — so a wrong opening balance makes the books out by exactly that amount, for ever, with nothing else appearing to be wrong.

🔎 Reconciliation match window

How many days apart a bank line and a ledger entry may be and still be offered as a match. A payment taken on Friday often lands on Monday, so a window of a few days catches the pair; too wide and it starts offering last month’s subscription of the same amount. Five to seven days suits most clubs.

🔐 Who can edit supplier bank details

The one setting on this page that is about fraud rather than bookkeeping. Changing where a supplier gets paid is how invoice-redirection fraud works, so it can be narrowed to the Treasurer alone even where several people manage the accounts. Narrow it unless there is a reason not to.

🧾 VAT and bank details

Only tick VAT registered if the club genuinely is — it changes how prices are treated at the till as well as here. The bank details and the invoice template are wording that appears on what you send out; they affect nothing that is calculated.

Common questions

We picked the wrong accounting basis. Can we change it?

Yes, but not casually. Figures move between years, so run and keep your reports before changing it, and tell whoever examines the accounts. Mid-year is the worst time; just after a year end is the best.

The reconciliation never offers the right match.

Usually the match window is too narrow for how long your bank takes to settle card payments. Widen it a couple of days at a time rather than jumping to thirty, which starts matching things that only look alike.

Do we have to fill in the bank details?

Only if you want them printed on invoices and statements so members can pay by transfer. Nothing else reads them.