Subs without the chasing

Ask any club treasurer what the worst part of the job is and you will get the same answer. It is the chasing. Half the squad has paid, a few are a month behind, two have paid the wrong amount, and somebody's dad says he sent it last week. All of it lands on one person, at the side of a pitch in the rain, where nobody wants to talk about money.

Almost nobody minds paying. Parents know the club needs the subs. What they mind is being asked in front of other parents, and what the treasurer minds is having to ask.

So the money comes in late and the awkwardness builds. Every few seasons the person doing the chasing has had enough and steps down. The club then looks for a new treasurer and wonders why nobody wants the job.

What chasing costs the club

Unpaid subs look like a small problem because each one is a tenner. Add them up over a season and a club of ten teams can be owed a few thousand pounds by the spring, most of which it will never fully collect. That is the pitch hire for a term, or a set of goals.

Then there is the time. The reconciling, the reminders and the messages that start "sorry to ask again" add up to a few hours a month. They fall on somebody who is already giving up their Saturdays.

There is a quieter cost too. Cash handed over at training has to get to the bank. Bank transfers arrive with a reference of "football" and no name. The spreadsheet that tracks it all is only right on the day it was last updated.

When the treasurer changes, the new one inherits a set of numbers they cannot check. They also inherit a list of people who owe money that nobody can prove.

Split the money into the three things it is

Most of the mess comes from treating all club money as one pot. It is three separate things, and they behave differently.

• A registration fee. It is paid once, at sign-on. Tie it to the registration itself, so a player is registered once it is paid. There is no chasing at all.
• Subs. A fixed amount on a fixed schedule, weekly, monthly or for the season. This is the one that should collect itself.
• Match fees. These are only owed for games a player turned out for. This is the one that gets counted in a car park and goes wrong.

Once they are separate, the treasurer's question stops being "who owes us money". It becomes three small questions with clear answers.

What a better setup looks like

Whatever you use, aim for these four things.

• The subs are set once, at the start of the season, with a due date for each instalment.
• Reminders are one tap and come from the club, so nobody has to be the one who asked.
• Match fees are charged for the games a player turned up to, worked out from the team sheet and never from memory.
• The money lands in the club's own bank account, and the treasurer can see who has paid without opening a spreadsheet.

If cards are involved there is a cost to collecting, and it is worth knowing it in pence before you sign anything. Ask what a £30 monthly sub and a £3 match fee cost the club to collect, with every fee included. A flat, published rate is the one you can plan around.

Three things to agree, whatever you use

• Write down what the subs are and what they pay for, and put it where parents can see it. People pay faster when they know the money is the pitch hire and the referee.
• Decide, quietly and in advance, what happens when a family cannot pay. Every club has one or two, and a policy agreed in September is far kinder than a conversation in February.
• Give the money one owner and one deputy, the same as registration. Two people who can both see the numbers means the club is never one resignation away from losing track of what it is owed.