Every society already has a system. It is usually a register, sometimes a spreadsheet, occasionally an app. They fail in different ways and at different sizes, and it is worth knowing which failure you are currently living with.
The register
It works, and it has worked for decades. It needs no training, no signal and no charger, and every treasurer in India can use one. It breaks in three predictable places: only one person can hold it, only that person can total it, and it cannot prove anything to anyone who was not there. For a small mandal with one collector, a register is genuinely fine.
The spreadsheet
A real improvement: it totals itself, and it can be shared. It breaks the moment two people edit it, or a formula is dragged one row short, or the file becomes “Ganpati_2026_final_v3_FINAL.xlsx”. Nobody can tell you who changed a cell or when, and no resident ever received a receipt from a spreadsheet. It is a calculator that remembers — not a ledger.
A purpose-built app
The point is not that it is digital. It is that the record is created at the moment of collection, by whichever volunteer is standing there, into one place — and that it issues a numbered receipt while doing it. Ten collectors, one clean series, one running total, one report at the end.
What to actually look for
If you evaluate anything — Kosh or otherwise — these are the questions that separate a tool built for festival committees from a generic accounting product.
- Can a volunteer record a collection in under a minute, on a phone, at the mandap?
- Does it issue a numbered receipt automatically, in one unbroken series?
- Can it record money from non-members — shops, visitors — not just flats?
- Does it track vendor deals, part payments and balances, not just payments?
- Can volunteers collect without being able to edit the accounts?
- Does it produce an itemised, publishable report without extra work?
- Will last year’s festival still be there next year, to compare against?
Be honest about your size
A 30-unit mandal with one treasurer does not need software. A 200-unit society with twelve volunteers, four festivals and an AGM does — not because the treasurer is untrustworthy, but because no single person should have to be the system of record for ten lakh rupees.