For food banks
The back office for a food bank, kept as carefully as the food
Small gifts and big grants recorded properly, restricted money kept apart, the reports your funders expect sent on time, and the records about volunteers and the people you help kept the way the law expects.
Free for 30 days, no card needed. Then £5 a month or £50 a year, everything included.
What makes a food bank's paperwork different
A food bank handles more small sums, more volunteers and more sensitive information than most charities its size.
- Lots of small gifts, a lot of it in cash. Collection tins, church collections, a supermarket donation box. Counted by volunteers, banked a few days later, and easily recorded twice - once when it was given and again when it was paid in.
- Grants with strings attached. The council grant is for fuel vouchers, the trust grant is for the warehouse rent. Each wants a report, and each must be spent on what it was given for.
- A large team of volunteers. Some need DBS checks, all need to know the data protection rules, and the coordinator needs to know who has had which check and when.
- Information about people in hardship. Names, addresses and circumstances of the people you help, passed on by referral partners. A breach is serious, and the law gives you seventy-two hours to decide whether to report it.
What The Charity Office does for a food bank
A cash tin that is an account of its own
Record the takings against the cash tin when they are counted. When they are paid in, that is a move between your own accounts, so it is never counted as income twice - the commonest way a food bank's year ends up looking twice as good as it was.
Restricted grants kept apart
Mark a grant as restricted and name the fund. The cashflow shows how much of the bank balance is restricted, so nobody reads the fuel voucher money as money for anything.
Reports owed to funders, with a reminder
Every report and monitoring return you owe, with its date, and an email to the treasurer before it is due.
Volunteer DBS checks
Checks for volunteers as well as trustees, with the level and the date your policy says to look again. Certificate numbers are encrypted and never shown in a list.
Data protection records
Consent records for newsletters and photographs, requests from people asking what you hold about them with the deadline worked out, and a breach log that starts the seventy-two hour clock as soon as a breach is written down.
Insurance and the warehouse lease
Each insurance policy with its renewal date, and contracts - the unit rent, the van servicing - with how much notice they need, all on one list with reminders.
What it costs
£5 a month, or £50 a year
One price with everything in it: the money, the forecast, the trustees, the meetings, the compliance records, the grants and the GDPR records. No charge per trustee, and the charity is billed rather than whoever signed up, so the subscription stays put when the committee changes.
Questions people ask
Does it track food stock, parcels or vouchers?
No. It is the back office: the money, the trustees, the funders and the paperwork. Keep using whatever you use now for stock and referrals.
How do we record a church collection or a tin of donations?
As income, dated the day it was counted, against a cash account if it has not yet been banked. When you pay it in, record a move from cash to the bank. The income is counted once, and the bank balance still comes out right.
Does it do Gift Aid?
No. It does not make Gift Aid claims to HMRC. When a repayment arrives you can record it as income in the ordinary way.
Can our coordinator see the DBS records without seeing the money?
A secretary can keep the trustee, DBS and policy records and see the money without changing it. A volunteer login sees only documents and meetings.
We are a project of a church rather than a charity of our own. Can we still use it?
Yes, if you keep your own books and paperwork. It is written for registered charities, so one or two words on the screens may not fit exactly.
Bring in this year's donations and grants
Start free, put in what is in the bank and in the cash tin, and see the restricted money set apart from the rest.