Ask a committee what the mandap cost three years ago and watch what happens. Somebody will say “I think around ₹40,000?”. Somebody else will say it was more. The person who actually knew left the committee in 2024 and took the register — or the phone, or the spreadsheet — with them. Every year the society starts again from memory, and every year it negotiates with vendors from a position of ignorance.
The handover that actually matters is the history
Handing over the cash and the bank signatory is the part everyone remembers. Handing over the knowledge — what things cost, who was reliable, what went wrong — is the part that determines whether the new committee is competent in its first year or its third.
What must survive a change of committee
If any of these live in an individual’s possession rather than the society’s, you do not have records — you have a loan.
- Past years’ collections and expenses, itemised
- The member register, current as of today
- Vendor names, what was agreed, what was actually paid, and whether they were any good
- Permission letters, certificates and insurance documents
- The closing balance, and physically where it is
- Sponsor names and what they gave — your warmest list
Records belong to the society, not the treasurer
This is not a matter of trust. A diary in a person’s cupboard is inaccessible when that person travels, resigns, falls ill or falls out with the committee. The record must be somewhere the society controls, and more than one person must be able to open it. This is exactly why a shared, role-based system beats a personal register even when the personal register is meticulously kept.
Hand over access, not just files
The modern version of losing the register is the outgoing treasurer keeping the only login. Transfer the admin role to the incoming committee, add the new office-bearers, remove the ones who have left, and check on the day of the handover that someone other than the departing person can actually get in. In Kosh that is a two-minute job in roles and users — and it is the difference between inheriting a decade of history and inheriting a rumour.