17 September 2026
The PTA treasurer: what does the role actually involve?
A PTA treasurer keeps the financial records, makes payments the committee has approved and reports on the PTA’s money at meetings and at the AGM. If the PTA is a registered charity, the treasurer also prepares the year-end accounts for the Charity Commission.
This post goes through each part of the job, and shows how Treasurer’s Ledger helps with it.
Deciding what to fund
The committee as a whole is responsible for the PTA’s money. If you are a registered charity, committee members are trustees and share that responsibility equally.
That includes deciding what to spend it on, whether it is new library books, a subsidy for the Year 6 trip or a contribution towards a school project. The treasurer’s job is to tell the committee what is affordable, and to make sure decisions follow the process in your constitution.
If your PTA uses the Parentkind model constitution for England and Wales, spending is a committee decision. It is decided by a majority vote at a committee meeting where at least half the committee is present. It can also be agreed in writing, and email counts, but then every committee member has to sign up to it. Anyone who would benefit personally has to declare it and sit out the vote. If you use a different constitution, check what yours says — and check the wording of your own even if it is this one, because model documents are amended.
The model constitution also lets the committee make its own rules on bank accounts and managing money. Many PTAs use this to agree a financial policy setting out who can approve what, so small everyday spending does not need a meeting.
With Treasurer’s Ledger
The approval is kept with the payment record, so when the independent examiner or a committee member asks, you can show each payment was signed off properly.
Recording transactions
For every transaction you need the date, the amount, what it was for, a category and how it was paid. Each one should have evidence behind it: a receipt, an invoice or a bank statement line.
Registered charities must keep accounting records for at least six years. That is six years of paperwork that has to survive several changes of treasurer.
With Treasurer’s Ledger
Categories are set up for PTAs, and receipts are attached to the transaction they support. The records belong to the PTA’s account, not to whoever is treasurer this year, so handovers are smooth and easy. No more inheriting a spreadsheet and a prayer.
Income
PTA income comes in as cash from stalls, card payments at events, online donations, ticket sales and grants.
Card reader payouts arrive in the bank as a single amount with fees already deducted. Working out what that amount is made up of takes time.
With Treasurer’s Ledger
It connects to SumUp, Zettle, Square and Zeffy, and to PTA Events and Classlist through Stripe, so income comes through with the detail included. You can also set up each fundraising event with its own income and costs, so you know what the summer fair actually made after the bouncy castle hire.
Expenses and supplier payments
Once spending is agreed, the treasurer pays for it. That means paying suppliers, venues and the school, and reimbursing volunteers who have bought things for the PTA. Every payment needs evidence behind it, and volunteers should be paid back promptly.
Your own expenses need a second person. Because of the conflict of interest rule, you should not be the one approving a payment to yourself. One way to handle this is to have two signatories on the PTA bank account, so a second signatory has to authorise any payment of your own expenses.
With Treasurer’s Ledger
Volunteers can submit a claim by uploading a receipt, using a guest link or emailing it to your PTA’s claims address. The details are read from the receipt and filled in. Volunteers only see their own claims, and their claims wait for your approval before they are paid. Committee members who just want to keep an eye on things can have view-only access.
Reconciliation
Once a month, check your records against the bank statement. This picks up missed entries, duplicates and bank charges you did not record.
With Treasurer’s Ledger
Upload your bank statement and transactions are matched to your records automatically. You only need to look at the ones that do not match.
Restricted funds
Money given for a specific purpose can only be spent on that purpose. If parents donate to a playground appeal, that money is for the playground. Grants usually come with the same kind of conditions.
You need to track this money separately from your general funds, including what has been spent and what is left.
With Treasurer’s Ledger
Restricted and unrestricted funds are kept apart from the start. You can see the balance of each restricted fund at any time, and it carries forward into the next year.
Budgets and committee updates
At the start of the year, work with the committee to set a budget. Then give a short update at each committee meeting covering income, spending and the bank balance, with a comparison against the budget from time to time.
With Treasurer’s Ledger
You set the budget once and see actual figures against it as the year goes on. Before a meeting, you can produce a committee report in one click.
Year end
At year end you will prepare a summary of what came in and went out, and a statement of what the PTA owns and owes. You will present a treasurer’s report at the AGM.
In England and Wales, the Charity Commission requires a charity to register once its gross income goes above £5,000, and a registered charity files an annual return. Where gross income is above £25,000 the accounts need an independent examination, and a smaller PTA can choose to have one anyway. Both rules carry conditions — how the PTA is constituted, whether it is registered, and which nation it is in all change the answer — so they are worth checking against the regulator rather than assuming.
With Treasurer’s Ledger
Year-end close produces the figures for the Charity Commission’s CC16a form and puts together an export for your independent examiner.
Handover
When your term ends, the next treasurer needs records they can pick up and use.
With Treasurer’s Ledger
You give them access. The transactions, receipts, budgets and year-end figures are already there.
In short
The job is recording, paying, checking and reporting. None of it needs an accounting qualification. It does need a system that keeps everything in one place and makes the monthly and yearly tasks quick.
Built by a PTA treasurer, for PTA treasurers
£19 a year. The first 50 PTAs to set up a Direct Debit get their whole first year free.
Start your free trial →This page is general information about the role, not advice about your charity or your constitution. The Charity Commission publishes its own guidance for trustees, your governing document is the authority on how your committee takes decisions, and your independent examiner is the right person to ask about your particular accounts.