How a Bedford theatre society closed a £236 gap in its show takings

Dev Mistry is treasurer of Ouse Valley Players, an amateur theatre society in Bedford founded in 1961, with 58 members and three productions a year in a 180-seat community hall in Kempston. In November 2023, six nights of pantomime takings reached the bank £236 short of the tickets sold, and nobody could say where the money went.

Where the society started

Dev, a payroll officer at a logistics firm in Bedford, joined the society in 2019 to build sets and found himself running the lighting desk within a year. He became treasurer in January 2024, two months after the pantomime, when the previous treasurer stepped down after nine years in the job.

The society is a registered charity with an income of about £31,400 a year: roughly £24,000 from tickets, £2,610 from £45 annual subs, around £3,000 from £30 show fees paid by cast members, and the rest from the bar and a summer raffle. Because income is over £25,000, the accounts go to an independent examiner every year.

Before 2024, money moved like this:

• Subs and show fees were mostly paid in cash at rehearsals, into a tin the treasurer kept.
• Door and bar takings were counted on each show night by one volunteer, bagged and taken home.
• Everything was banked together, often a week or more later.
• Volunteers who bought props or make-up were paid back from the cash tin, sometimes without a receipt.

What went wrong with the pantomime?

The pantomime ran for six performances in November 2023 and sold 912 tickets, some online and some on the door from numbered books. When the outgoing treasurer matched the bank deposit against the tickets, the deposit was £236 short.

It could have been one miscounted night, a float that was never put back, or a refund handed out at the door and not written down. There was no way to tell. Each night's bag had been counted by a different person, and no count had been written down anywhere.

The examiner's report on the 2023-24 accounts made the same point from the other side. It raised 11 queries, eight of them about spending with no receipt behind it.

"Nobody thought anyone had taken anything. That was almost the worst part. We had no way to prove it either way, and the person who'd done the most to hold the money together for nine years was the one left feeling awkward."

What Dev set up in Bitir

Dev worked from the Charity Commission's guidance on internal financial controls (CC8) and the steps in our club treasurer's guide to handling money. The committee agreed the changes in March 2024, and the society moved its members onto Bitir for the September 2024 season.

1. Tickets online, a card reader on the door. Door sales still happen, but most go on the card reader. The cash float is a fixed £50, counted out and counted back.
2. Two people count every night. The front-of-house manager and a second committee member count door and bar cash together, fill in a count sheet and both sign it. The bag goes in the bank's night safe the next morning.
3. Subs and show fees as payment requests. Subs go out from a template every September, and show fees go out when a production is cast. Members pay the society's bank account with their name as the reference and mark the request paid with a screenshot of the transfer. Dev confirms each one.
4. Two approvers on the bank. The chair was added as second approver, so no payment leaves the account on one person's say-so.
5. A monthly reconciliation the chair checks. Dev matches the cash book to the bank statement by the fifth of each month, and a dated task reminds the chair to check and initial it by the tenth.
6. No receipt, no refund. Volunteers post a photo of the receipt in the committee channel within 14 days and are paid by bank transfer, never from cash.

What changed in the numbers?

Dev compared the 2023-24 season with 2024-25, which also had three productions and a pantomime.

The £3.40 was a bar float short on the Saturday matinee of the 2024 pantomime, written on the count sheet that night and explained by a miscounted bag of coins. The single examiner query was about how the society values its stored costumes, which had nothing to do with cash.

Month-end got quicker too. Reconciling used to take Dev's predecessor two evenings with a calculator. With most payments arriving as bank transfers already matched to a member, Dev reconciles in about 40 minutes.

"The count sheet is the bit I'd keep if I could only keep one thing. Two signatures on the night means nobody ever has to feel like the last person who touched the bag."

What Dev does in Bitir

• Payment templates for annual subs and per-production show fees, sent from the Templates tab with the due date set.
• Member claims with a transfer screenshot attached, which Dev confirms or rejects from his review queue.
• Record payment for the four members who still pay cash at rehearsal, with a receipt sent automatically.
• A payments role held by Dev and the assistant treasurer, so directors and stage managers never see who is behind.
• Dated tasks reminding the chair to check the monthly reconciliation.
• The CSV export at year end, matched line by line against the bank statement for the examiner.

What he would tell another society

• Write down every cash count on the night, with two names on it.
• Stop taking subs in cash. Make an exception for the few who need it and record it on the spot.
• Ask a second person to look at the reconciliation. Ten minutes a month is enough.
• Never repay expenses from cash takings.
• Do it before something goes missing, not after.

What's next

For the 2025-26 season the society has written its money rules into a one-page finance policy, adopted at the AGM alongside the accounts, following the agenda in our guide to running a club AGM. Dev is also training the assistant treasurer to run a full month on her own, so the role never again depends on one person.

Related reading: the club treasurer's guide to handling money, and chasing unpaid subs without souring the group.