The treasurer of an association with 300 members spends around three hours a week on finances. Vouchers, bank, payment reminders, the VAT compensation application, reports to the board. That is 150 hours a year, and almost all of it is manual work that goes unnoticed until it is missing. The question is not whether it needs doing. The question is who does it, and with what.
The obligation is the same however small you are
A sports club or association has an obligation to keep accounts on a par with a small company on several points: bookkeeping, keeping vouchers for five years, annual accounts for the annual general meeting, and correct handling of VAT and payroll if anyone is on the payroll. On top of that comes what is specific to the voluntary sector. VAT compensation is calculated from the operating costs in the accounts, so accounts with gaps mean less money back. The chart of accounts should follow the sports standard, otherwise reporting upwards becomes a translation exercise. It must be possible to keep team funds, income from volunteer work (dugnad), personal contributions and sponsorship money separate.
And the pressure is growing from both sides. In NIF's own situation analysis (February 2026), half of sports clubs say fewer people pay membership and training fees than before, 42 per cent report lower sponsorship income, and half point to time spent on administration as one of their biggest challenges. In Frivillighetsbarometeret 2024 (the Norwegian volunteering barometer), the voluntary sector as a whole scored just 16 per cent on “strong on digitalisation”.
There are three ways to solve it. All three are legal. They cost different amounts — though not in kroner, at first.
Route 1: Spreadsheet or free software
This is what most people start with, and “free accounting software for sports clubs” is one of the most common searches in the category. It works for an association with 40 members and twenty vouchers a year.
The cost shows up in three places. Time: everything is entered twice, once in the bank and once in the spreadsheet. Continuity: when the treasurer steps down, the logic of the spreadsheet walks out the door with her — SpareBank 1 describes the same thing for accounts held in private individuals' names: the history cannot be transferred to a new board, it is lost. And VAT compensation: team finances that are never entered in the books — kiosk, volunteer work (dugnad), personal contributions, expenses — disappear from the basis. For a club with twelve teams, we calculated it at NOK 3,600 a year.
Route 2: Accounting software made for associations
Accounting software removes the double entry. Bank transactions are imported automatically, vouchers are linked to the transactions, and the basis for VAT compensation can be extracted from the system instead of being worked out in February.
Four things set software for voluntary organisations apart from software for businesses. The sports chart of accounts should be ready to use, not built from scratch. Member payments — membership fees, training fees, registration, Vipps — should end up in the accounts without anyone transferring them by hand. Expenses and team funds should be trackable per section and team, so that cost control happens along the way and not just at year-end. And the handover to the next treasurer should be a login, not a course.
Rubic is integrated with Catacloud. That connection is what makes the four things possible in practice: membership fees, training fees, registration payments and Vipps are posted from the membership system straight into the accounts, with the sports chart of accounts in place from the start and bank integration underneath. No export file, no manual reconciliation between two systems that don't talk to each other.
The treasurer still keeps the accounts. She just does it once.
Route 3: Outsource it
The third route is to stop doing the bookkeeping yourselves. Rubic Regnskap is bookkeeping, VAT compensation and year-end closing carried out by accountants who do this every day, in the same Catacloud setup as in route 2. ECIT stands behind it, and the club gets professional help from state-authorised accountants, not a support chat.
And the price follows the number of members, not the hours spent. Rubic Regnskap has a fixed price per member. The difference is bigger than it looks. An hourly fee makes the accounts more expensive the more happens in the club — more teams, more events, more vouchers, a higher bill. A fixed price per member makes the cost predictable and scalable: it grows with the club, not with the level of activity, and it can be budgeted from the one figure the board knows anyway.
The treasurer doesn't become redundant. The role changes: she approves, follows the budget and reports to the board. She doesn't enter vouchers, interpret VAT rules or sit alone with the year-end closing in February. It is also the only version of the treasurer role that you can actually recruit for. When the next person asks what the position involves, the answer is something a person with a job and a family can say yes to.
The calculation
Take the association from the introduction: 300 members, three hours a week. Statistics Norway (SSB) values a volunteer hour at around NOK 380 (NOK 107 billion for 280 million hours worked in 2023). We use a conservative figure of 350. That makes 150 hours worth NOK 52,500 a year in volunteer time spent on bookkeeping, not on activities.
In our experience, accounting software removes the double entry and the payment reminders — well over half of the time. If you outsource the accounts, almost all of the hours disappear, in return for a fixed price per member that you know in advance. (The figures are an example. The number of hours varies with the number of teams and employees, and how many payments bypass the membership system.)
What matters is not which figure you end up with. It is that you work it out before you choose a route, instead of inheriting the choice from the previous treasurer.
Frequently asked questions
Are sports clubs required to keep accounts? Yes. All sports clubs in NIF must keep accounts in accordance with NIF's accounting and auditing regulations: vouchers must be kept for five years, the bank account must be in the club's name and operated jointly by two people, and all sections must be shown in the annual accounts. Clubs with a turnover of more than NOK 5 million are subject to audit; the largest follow the regnskapsloven (Norwegian Accounting Act) in full.
Is there free accounting software for sports clubs? Spreadsheets are free, and some programs have free tiers for the smallest organisations. Free means the cost is shifted to the treasurer's time and to the VAT compensation basis.
How much does it cost to outsource the accounts? Rubic Regnskap is priced per member, as a fixed amount. That way the club knows the cost before the year begins, regardless of how many vouchers come in.
How do you keep accounts in an association? Use the sports or voluntary sector chart of accounts, link each voucher to a bank transaction, keep teams and sections separate, and prepare the annual accounts so that VAT compensation can be applied for directly from them. Which software suits your size?
Want to know which route suits you? Book a free demo — 30 minutes in which we work through your numbers and show you the accounts connected to the membership system.
Rubic is part of ECIT.