Committee (BC) Management
Members, monthly collection, the draw and who has already taken their turn — written down, so the organiser is not the only record.
A committee is a trust business run on paper. The organiser collects from every member each month, hands the pool to whoever's turn it is, and carries the personal liability if someone stops paying after they have already taken theirs. That risk is the whole business, and it is usually managed from one notebook and one person's memory of who said what.
What gets built is a plain record: the members, the agreed amount, every month's collection by member, the draw order, who has received their turn and who has not, and the exposure the organiser is carrying at any moment. It will not make anyone pay. It removes the argument about what was agreed and what was received.
What it fixes
- One notebook holding the only record of a scheme involving twenty or thirty people's money
- Members who have taken their turn and then go slow, with no running figure for how much the organiser is now personally exposed to
- Monthly collection chased by phone with no list of who has paid and who has not this month
- Disputes about the draw order, or about whether a member paid in a particular month, settled by whoever argues hardest
- Members asking for a statement of their own payments and there being nothing to hand them
- Several committees running at once — different amounts, different members, different months — tracked in the same notebook
What gets built
A starting point, not a fixed list. The build is scoped to your own process before anything is written.
Committee setup
Monthly amount, number of members, duration and start month defined once, with several committees running side by side and kept separate.
Member records
Each member with contact details, which committees they are in, and whether they hold a full or half share — because half shares are normal and are where paper records usually break.
Monthly collection sheet
One screen per month showing who has paid, who is pending and the total collected, so the chase list is a list rather than a recollection.
Draw and payout record
The draw order, who took their turn in which month, the amount handed over, and the acknowledgement held against it.
Organiser exposure
The figure that matters: total already received by members who still owe future instalments. It is the organiser's real risk and it should be visible rather than estimated.
Member statement
A per-member statement of every payment and their turn, shareable, which settles most disputes before they become arguments.
Who this is for
Organisers running one or several committees — shopkeepers, office colleagues, family and neighbourhood groups — where the money passing through a cycle has grown large enough that the notebook is itself a risk. A six-member committee among relatives does not need software. It is also not a financial product, a licence or a guarantee: it records a private arrangement between people who already trust each other, and it cannot make a defaulting member pay or make the scheme legally enforceable.
Questions
Can it stop a member defaulting after they have taken their turn?
No, and be wary of anyone who says otherwise. What it does is show the exposure early, give you a complete payment history per member, and leave a clear record if the matter ever goes beyond conversation. The judgement about who to admit stays yours.
Who should be able to edit a month that is already marked paid?
Worth deciding deliberately before the build rather than afterwards. In most cases only the organiser should be able to change a paid entry, and every change should be logged with who made it and when. If a helper enters collections, give them entry rights and not correction rights.
Can members see their own record on their phones?
That can be built — a simple member view or a shared statement link. Whether you want it is a real question: visibility reduces disputes, but it also means a member can see the month they are behind, which some organisers would rather handle by phone. Either way it is scoped, not assumed.
Tell us how your committee runs.
We scope it first — what it takes, how long, what it costs. No obligation.