If you are responsible for managing your club’s canteen money, you will know how useful a canteen can be for boosting club finances. However, the canteen has its own requirements, too, and one of them is to have sound accounting processes in place.  Without them, you are probably brewing your own small accounting catastrophe. If you have not yet established solid accounting habits for your canteen, you can find some tips and insights below.

Accounting for Canteen Stock

One of the most important rules for canteen managers is to always see to the proper accounting of stock. If you are doing it right, incoming stock and outgoing stock should always be in balance.  This will allow you to record your income accurately. If any products remain after their expiry date, you should include their disposal in the records, too. Always make sure that the deliveries you receive are correct and you have everything you’ve paid for. If any stock goes missing from the canteen, this careful accounting for stock will enable you to see it in your records.

The Canteen Money

If you don’t want to take chances with your club’s canteen, make sure that all the money going in and out of it is monitored and controlled. If the canteen serves a bigger club, you may need to appoint a person to take care of the canteen and manage the canteen’s money. You can also outsource this task to a volunteer if necessary, but the person responsible for the canteen must report back to you regularly.

One of their main tasks will be directly operating with money.  They will have to deal with the cash registers, balancing them at the end of every working day and counting the money. Apart from that, canteen accounting includes the establishing of a petty cash fund (check out our Managing Your Club’s Petty Cash post).

The person who is responsible for accounting the canteen money will have to set a particular sum for the fund – its float – and maintain it at all times. Moreover, it is good to fill in slips which will help dividing the amount of money flow into what’s in the float, what’s been received as sales, what’s been spent for payments. An advanced level of categorizing would include the particular items paid or sold. All petty cash payments should be recorded in detail, including who used the money, when, and for what.

The orders and invoices of the canteen should be paid on time. Make sure all payments above $50 are carried out electronically or through a cheque. The same goes for the receiving of new stock – you shouldn’t use the petty cash fund to pay for it. The petty cash fund should be reserved only for small or unexpected payments and its float should be a small and round sum (for example, $100).

To sum up, all the tips above will help you to run the canteen of your club without turning it into an accounting nightmare. If you are using accounting software for your club’s money, it is good to incorporate the canteen’s accounts into it. Don’t hesitate to contact us if you need club software to manage your accounts. The Admin Bandit system is successfully being used by clubs of all sizes.