It’s AGM season again, and somewhere in the UK, a swim club treasurer is composing their resignation email.

Not because they don’t care. Not because they’re lazy. Because they’re exhausted from spending 10-15 hours a week chasing subscription payments, reconciling spreadsheets, and answering the same parent questions over and over again.

If your club has burned through three treasurers in two years, it’s not a people problem. It’s a systems problem.

The Treasurer Workload Reality

Ask most swim club committee members what the treasurer does, and they’ll say “handles the money.” Ask a treasurer, and you’ll get a very different answer.

A typical week looks like this:

Monday evening: Send reminder emails to 12 parents whose standing orders failed
Tuesday morning: Update the spreadsheet with last week’s bank transfers (matching payments to names when the reference is just “SMITH”)
Wednesday lunchtime: Reply to three parent emails asking “what do I owe?”
Thursday evening: Check the bank, update the spreadsheet again, discover two mystery payments with no reference
Friday afternoon: Send invoice for gala entry fees (manually calculated per swimmer)
Saturday morning: Field questions at poolside about why direct debits are better than standing orders
Sunday: Realise you’ve spent 10 hours this week on tasks that should take two

According to research from volunteer sports organisations, treasurers at small-to-medium swim clubs spend an average of 10-15 hours per week on administrative tasks during term time. That’s 400-600 hours per year of unpaid work.

No wonder they quit.

Why Manual Systems Break Down

Most swim clubs run on a combination of Excel spreadsheets, bank standing orders, and WhatsApp. It works, until it doesn’t.

Spreadsheet Chaos

The treasurer’s spreadsheet is the single source of truth, except when it isn’t. It lives on one person’s laptop. It has tabs for members, payments, gala fees, training camps, and squad moves. It has formulas that only the person who created it understands.

When the treasurer quits, they hand over a file that looks like archaeological evidence of someone else’s thought process.

And then there’s the reconciliation problem: matching bank payments to member records when parents use different names, forget to include references, or pay for multiple children in one transaction. Forensic accounting skills shouldn’t be a requirement for volunteering at a swim club.

WhatsApp Archaeology

Parent asks: “Did I pay for February?”

Treasurer thinks: “Did they? Let me check the spreadsheet. No entry. Let me check the bank statement. Three payments from people called Smith. Let me scroll back through WhatsApp to find their original message about switching banks.”

Ten minutes later, you’ve found the answer. Multiply that by 50 parents per term.

Bank Reconciliation Hell

Standing orders are brilliant until they’re not. Parents set them up once, then:

Change banks and forget to set up the new standing order
Cancel it because they’re on holiday and forget to restart it
Set the wrong amount because fees changed
Use their child’s name as the reference, which doesn’t match your membership records

You don’t find out until the end of the month when you’re manually matching payments to members. By then, they’re four weeks in arrears, and you’re the one who has to chase them.

The Handover Problem

When a treasurer quits, knowledge walks out the door with them.

The new treasurer inherits:

A spreadsheet they don’t fully understand
Incomplete documentation of who owes what
No context on ongoing payment issues
Parent relationships they have to rebuild
A backlog of reconciliation they’re too afraid to question

The first three months are spent just trying to get their head above water. The next three months are spent realising why their predecessor quit. By month nine, they’re updating their own resignation letter.

The pattern repeats.

What Good Looks Like

Swim club treasurers shouldn’t need to be accountants, project managers, and debt collectors rolled into one. The role should be about financial stewardship, not administrative archaeology.

Here’s what a sustainable treasurer workflow looks like:

Automated Collection

Direct Debit collection through a proper provider (like GoCardless) means:

Payments happen automatically on a set date each month
Failed payments retry automatically (most resolve without treasurer intervention)
You get notified immediately if a payment fails after retries
Parents can manage their own mandates (update card details, pause payments, etc.)

Treasurer time saved: 8-10 hours per month

Real-Time Visibility

A proper club management system shows:

Who’s paid, who’s pending, who’s overdue (at a glance)
Payment history per member (no spreadsheet archaeology)
Automated reports for committee meetings (no manual prep)

Treasurer time saved: 2-3 hours per month

Reconciliation That Doesn’t Require Forensic Skills

When payments are collected through a platform integrated with your membership records:

Every payment is automatically matched to the right member
You don’t need to decode bank references
Monthly reconciliation is a 10-minute review, not a 4-hour investigation

Treasurer time saved: 3-4 hours per month

Knowledge That Doesn’t Walk Out the Door

When your processes live in a system, not a spreadsheet:

The next treasurer can see exactly what the last one did
Historical data is preserved and searchable
Handover is a two-hour training session, not a three-month archaeological dig

How to Evaluate If Your Current System Is Sustainable

Ask your treasurer these questions:

“How many hours per week do you spend on admin vs actual financial oversight?” If it’s more than 3-4 hours on admin, the system is broken.
“If you quit tomorrow, how long would it take your replacement to get up to speed?” If the answer is “months,” your knowledge is trapped in one person’s head.
“How much time do you spend chasing late payments?” If it’s more than 30 minutes per week, you need automated collection.
“How confident are you that the spreadsheet is accurate?” If there’s any hesitation, you have a reconciliation problem.
“Would you recommend this role to another parent?” If the answer is no, you’re going to struggle to fill it.

The Cost of Free Tools

“But we don’t have budget for software” is the most expensive sentence in volunteer sports.

A treasurer’s time is worth something, even if they’re not being paid. At minimum wage rates, 10 hours per week is worth £6,000 per year. At a professional rate, it’s £15,000.

The real question isn’t “can we afford tools?” It’s “can we afford to keep losing treasurers?”

What Clubs Are Doing About It

Forward-thinking swim clubs are moving to proper Direct Debit collection and club management platforms. Some are using standalone tools like GoCardless for payments. Others are adopting integrated platforms (like Swimly) that handle membership, billing, and compliance in one place.

The common thread: they’ve stopped treating treasurer burnout as a people problem and started treating it as a systems problem.

Your Move

If you’re reading this as a committee member: talk to your treasurer. Ask them honestly how sustainable their workload is. If they’re spending more time chasing payments than managing finances, it’s time to change the system.

If you’re reading this as a treasurer: you’re not failing. The system is failing you. It’s okay to say “this isn’t sustainable” and ask the committee to invest in better tools.

And if you’re reading this as a club that just lost another treasurer: stop looking for a replacement who’ll tolerate the old system. Fix the system, then find the replacement.

Your treasurer shouldn’t need to quit before you take this seriously.

Thinking about better tools for your club? See how Swimly compares to SwimClub Manager and Club Organiser, check our pricing, or join our pilot programme to help build features that eliminate treasurer burnout.

Why Your Swim Club Treasurer Quits (And How to Fix It)