A Treasurer handover checklist that doesn’t lose the year

January is when a lot of Treasurers quietly say: “I’m done after the next AGM.”

Sometimes it’s burnout. Sometimes it’s a new job. Sometimes they’ve been the only person who understood the MYOB file since 2017 and they’re just tired.

Whatever the reason, the handover is where associations either stay solvent—or spend six months reconstructing history from email threads and a shoebox of receipts.

I’ve cleaned up enough of those messes to have opinions. Strong ones.

Treat handover as a project, not a coffee

A half-hour chat is not a handover.

Block time. Use a checklist. Sit together (or screen-share) and do the transfers, not just talk about them. The outgoing Treasurer should remain available for a few weeks of “where is X?” questions—but the systems should already work without them.

If your outgoing Treasurer is leaving in a huff, still do the checklist. Especially then.

Access first—always

Before anything clever:

• Bank account signatories and online banking users

• • Accounting software login (and licence ownerpersonal email is a trap)

  • • BAS / STP / ATO access if relevant (and who the registered agent is)

    • • Grant portals and acquittal logins

      • • Payment platforms (Stripe, Square, TryBooking, etc.)

        • • Debit cards and who holds them

          • • Safe or lockbox keys, if you still live in that world

          • Remove access when people leave. I’ve seen ex-committee members still able to view bank balances months later because “we forgot.” That’s not friendly. That’s a control failure.

      • The money story, not just the balances

    • Hand over:

  • • Current bank balances and reconciliations

    • • Unpresented cheques / pending payments

      • • Recurring payments and subscriptions (Zoom, software, insurance)

        • • Outstanding invoices (yours and others’)

          • • Grant conditions and reporting dates

            • • Asset list (even a simple one)

              • • Auditor or reviewer contact, if you have one

                • • Where the last few years of reports live

                • Explain the quirks. “We code the hall hire under Programs, not Venue” saves the new person weeks of confusion.

              • Calendar the non-negotiables

            • Put these in a shared calendar the whole executive can see:

          • • BAS / IAS dates

            • • Insurance renewals

              • • Membership renewals that affect cashflow

                • • Grant acquittals

                  • • AGM financial report deadline

                    • • Audit timeline, if applicable

                    • A Treasurer’s brain is not a filing system. Calendars are.

                  • Documents that vanish if you don’t name them

                • Create one folder: Finance – Handover.

              • Put in it: chart of accounts notes, password manager instructions (shared securelynot in the folder as plain text), supplier list, payroll contacts, and a one-page “how we do money here.

            • If the only copy of last year’s financials is on a personal laptop, copy it to the organisation’s Drive today. That’s the Bus Factor again—just with a calculator.

        • The board’s job in all this

      • Don’t leave the new Treasurer to discover problems alone.

    • The President should check: Are we dual-authorising payments? Are we reviewing reports monthly? Do we understand enough to ask decent questions?

  • You don’t need to be an accountant. You need to notice when numbers stop making sense—and ask.

• A simple close-out

On the last official day: confirm access removed, confirm new signatories active, minute the handover completion, and thank the outgoing Treasurer properly. Public gratitude matters. So does a clean trail.

Common failure points (learn from other people’s pain)

The handovers that go wrong usually fail in the same places:

• Accounting file still owned by a personal email address

• • No list of direct debits, so subscriptions keep billing in silence

  • • Grant acquittal due two weeks after the AGM and nobody told the new Treasurer

    • • Petty cash tin that “doesn’t matter” until it does

      • • BAS lodged late because access wasnt transferred

      • Walk those specifically. Tick them off. It’s tedious. Tedious is cheaper than reconstruction.

    • One more tip: record a short screen-share walkthrough of “how we reconcile” while the outgoing Treasurer is still available. Future committees will bless you for a fifteen-minute video that replaces three panicked phone calls.

  • If your finance setup is a tangle and youd like a plain priority list before the next person inherits it, book a discovery call at plainsense.au/appointment. Happy to help you sort signal from noise.

• Good Treasurers leave more than balanced books. They leave a path the next person can walk.