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Clerk Assist for parish and town councils

Questions

What councils and clerks usually ask.

Short answers first. This is Clerk Assist as it stands — English parish and town councils, one login, mid-year joins taken. Prices stay off this page while slots are full.

What it is

What is Clerk Assist?

A council operating system for smaller English parish and town councils. One UK-hosted login covers the statutory website, council-owned email, receipts, payments, reconciliations and year-end summaries, a guided AGAR path, the governance year, policy creation and review, the statutory AGAR asset register and the insurance register, simple agendas and minutes, and optional hall or allotment bookings. Council-specific software — not a generic website builder and not a company accounts package.

Who built it?

A clerk who already does the job. More on that when the longer note is up. The point is not biography. The year, the handover and the two insurance dates were designed in, not bolted on.

Is this a toolkit, a website firm, or accounts software?

The whole working year in one system. Website firms sell a site and mail. Accounts packages sell a cashbook. Neither holds the precept year, the two asset lists and the public site from the same record. Clerk Assist is closer to a small council office than to one of those single tools. An assistant for the clerk.

What is included? Is anything extra?

The core statutory job is included: site, mail, cashbook and AGAR path, diary, policies, two asset registers, simple agendas and minutes, timesheet and notes written as if they might be requested, and help that cites the Practitioners’ Guide. Hall bookings and allotments can be turned off if you do not run them. Extra mailboxes beyond the included set are the usual optional extra. Mapping, cemeteries and a full town finance suite are out of scope.

Why not just use Xero, Wix and a personal Gmail?

Those tools can be made to limp. They were not written for Assertion 10, VAT126, a statutory asset register that must never take an insurance value, or a generic clerk mailbox that survives the person. A council-owned domain and a cashbook that knows AGAR boxes are not hobbies. Councils are a different thing to a business.

Who it is for

Which councils is this for?

English parish and town councils with turnover from nearly nothing up to about £200,000. Most of the fit is under £75,000 precept. New clerks, or clerks on a handful of hours, including those who clerk more than one council.

What does small, mid and larger look like?

Small: a few thousand to about £25,000 — often exemption territory, a clerk of a few hours, site, mailbox, reconcilable cashbook and dates that do not live in one head. Mid: about £25,000 to £75,000 — still receipts and payments, often a hall or plots, sometimes two clerkships. Upper end: up to about £200,000 — same system, not a town suite. Accruals are not required in this band.

Who is it not for?

A town council with a finance officer and a thousand transactions a month. A clerk who only wants a blank CMS. A council that only wants mapping or only a cemetery register.

We are a community council in Wales. Can we use it?

Not at the moment. The product is written around English AGAR, the Practitioners’ Guide and Assertion 10. Welsh community and town councils have a different audit and governance frame. We do not currently offer Wales-specific advice, so this is not suited to a Welsh council today.

Can one clerk use it across several councils?

Yes. That is a design point. Each council keeps its own year, insurance month, precept and registers. The clerk can see the dates together so Council A’s May insurance and Council B’s August renewal do not live in one head. Each council needs its own subscription.

Website and email

Is the website a blank WordPress site?

No. Meetings, agendas, minutes, councillor names, contacts and policies come from the same login as the cashbook and the diary. Colours and wording come from a short question set. It is built to carry what the Transparency Code already expects. Designed for councils — not a general CMS that could as easily be a community group or a company. No plugins and themes to battle with, and not Gutenberg.

Do we have to use a .gov.uk domain?

.gov.uk is best practice and what Assertion 10 and the Practitioners’ Guide point towards. It is not a separate statute. Clerk Assist is built so the council owns the domain. Pairing a .gov.uk name is part of onboarding, not an afterthought.

What email do we get?

A generic clerk or office address on the council’s own domain, plus councillor aliases. Personal Gmail and a clerk’s own name@provider fail FOI, handover and Assertion 10. Extra boxes if you have more councillors. Generally one or two office accounts plus councillor-specific ones. The included set is eleven mailboxes in total — typically the clerk and up to nine others. We are flexible. We do not recommend chair@ as the main generic box.

Does the website meet WCAG 2.2 AA?

Designed for that intent, with an accessibility statement. Guidance is given, because a user can move a live site away from compliance; there are ways to recover most of that. Photographs with watermarks or text baked into the image should not go live. PDFs the council uploads later are not automatically compliant.

What happens to our current website?

Migration is the first step. Current information, pictures and posts move across. Question forms are filled in by migration staff, or by the clerk — there is always some clerk involvement, because each council is different. The new site is tested on a holding address such as yourcouncil.chaptree.co.uk. When ready, a .gov.uk domain is pointed at the new site. An old .co.uk or .org can stay up with a message pointing to the new address. Old Gmail accounts can carry an autoresponder to the new mailbox.

Accounts and AGAR

Is this full double-entry or receipts and payments?

Receipts and payments, as smaller authorities actually use them. Bank reconciliation, budget and budget versus actual, VAT126 patterns, S137 and similar flags where they help year-end, and a guided path through the AGAR boxes. Not a city general ledger. What a small council needs — not what a multi-million-pound company needs.

We are under £25,000. Do we still need this?

Exemption from limited assurance does not remove the need for a reconcilable cashbook, a site and a mailbox the council owns. The system is sized for a few hundred transactions a year. Most customer councils sit in the under-£25,000 bracket.

Does it do accruals?

Not as the default. Councils in this band are not required to move to accruals. Above about £200,000, look at a town suite — a different product.

Will it produce the AGAR?

It guides the boxes from work already typed. It produces some of the paperwork — internal auditor appointment and impartiality papers among them. It does not sign the annual governance statement for the members. If the year was kept up, the AGAR section is a checklist and a button. If it was not, it is a job list. There is an April-ready checklist, reminders, and an end-of-year action.

Can we import last year’s spreadsheet?

Opening balances and a chart of accounts can be set at onboarding. A perfect one-click import of every historic Excel file is unlikely. Import from a properly structured accounts export is usually possible. It also depends on whether you use paid migration or do that part yourself.

The year, policies and assets

What is “the year”?

Insurance, grass cutting, streetlights or other contracts, budget start, precept, AGAR, internal audit and policy review dates — held per council. Not only a calendar entry. A task, and a draft agenda item when the date comes near.

We have two councils with different insurance months. Does that work?

Yes. That example exists because it is a real clerk failure mode. Each council is remembered separately. Setting renewal dates is part of migration. Migration is not only the website — it is everything you want to use. Stay on Excel for the books if you wish. Keep the old site for now, or for good, if you wish. Do not migrate the parts you are not ready to move.

Do policies come as Word files we rewrite every Sunday?

Templates ask the questions real clerks already know belong in the document — grant maximum, one application a year, deadline, bank details before an award — then insert the answers. Hundreds of councils are still sitting on unfilled NALC model regulations. You record the meeting and agenda item when it is adopted. The review date goes on the diary. When a new template exists, your previous answers come forward, you confirm them, and you answer anything new. There is a priority list: policies you must have by law, those most councils are expected to have, then the optional set for what you actually run. Failure to have the policy, and failure to review it, are very common.

Why two asset registers?

The statutory register for AGAR box 9 follows proper practices. Those values are not insurance values. The insurance schedule needs photos, what3words, sums insured and notes. One list must not overwrite the other. The system knows there are two, knows the difference, knows the review date you set at migration, and keeps an audit trail of additions and removals.

We have a hall or allotments. Is that included?

Yes, as a module you can use or turn off. Hire fees and plot rents can post into the cashbook when the money is the council’s. A separate charity hall should keep its own books. A separate allotment association should too. A council-run site shows as its own area of operation, with its own income and spend.

Assertion 10 and data

What is Assertion 10?

From 2025/26 the Annual Governance Statement asks about digital and data compliance. Councils already had UK GDPR, accessibility, FOI and, where it applies, the Transparency Code. The Guide put those duties under one heading and spelled out a generic mailbox on a council-owned domain and a written IT policy. Little of it was new. It was put in focus. Clerk Assist is built with that compliance at the core.

Does buying Clerk Assist tick Assertion 10?

No product ticks the box by magic. Members who refuse council mail still fail. Domain, mail, statutory site, IT and data-protection templates with review dates, UK hosting and an evidence pack for the internal auditor sit in one place. The council still has to adopt the policy and use the mailbox. The package reminds you and drafts the policies.

Where is the data hosted?

UK / EU.

Who owns the data if we leave?

The council always owns its record. Export is part of leaving. Mail addresses and the domain stay with the council. The archive is meant to include the policies created during the subscription, website content and a reminder list — easy to take, and easy to come back from if the council later finds what it now has to run alone.

Can we reclaim VAT?

Parish councils reclaim VAT on this kind of supply through VAT126. If each invoice was entered with the VAT split as you went, the return is close to a button for the figures you need. A running total shows when it is worth doing.

Joining, slots and mid-year

Are you taking new councils now?

Onboarding slots are currently full. Join the waiting list. When a place opens we will write.

Can we start mid-year?

Yes. Mid-year is preferred. The statutory year does not wait for April, and a website-and-mail move often should not wait either. March and April are already the busy end of the year.

How is a mid-year start charged?

The year is charged pro-rata for the remaining balance, rounded down to a full month. A council starting in November pays from December to the end of March inclusive. The annual subscription is then billed in March for April payment. Figures are given when a slot is in view, from last AGAR total income — not published here while the list is closed.

When do most councils resolve to buy?

Autumn and winter for an April start is common. Mid-year joins are still taken.

Why are there no prices on the website?

Because there are no slots available. When a place opens, send figures from your last AGAR total income and we will price for that council.

Is there a long contract?

An annual contract, one payment, billed in March and paid in April.

What does onboarding involve?

Domain and mail, opening balances, the public pages the Transparency Code expects, the diary dates for that council, and a short period where the old site or spreadsheet is retired. Capacity is kept finite on purpose. Migration can be a paid service — we do the bulk of the work — or the clerk can do it with guidance. Some clerk time is inevitable either way. Paid migration is usually no more expensive in the round: a higher hourly rate, fewer hours, because we already know the system. Results are better when we set it up.

People and handover

Will this cut the clerk’s hours?

Sometimes the hours stretch; sometimes they do not. The usual picture is a clerk who cannot get the work into the hours allotted. This takes some of the stress off, and lets more of the real job happen in those hours. It is like having an assistant who reminds you and holds the detail. A council that buys it to shrink the post will be disappointed. The aim is less time on admin and compliance, more on the projects the council actually chose.

What happens when the clerk leaves?

Council-owned mail and a record that is not on a home laptop. The next clerk inherits the year, the site and the cashbook, not a personal Gmail and a spreadsheet called FinalFinal3. Short-notice departures leave councils in a muddle. Change the login and the new clerk has most things to hand on day one.

Do councillors get their own logins?

The clerk remains the proper officer for almost all of Clerk Assist. Councillors would not normally have a login. There is a resilience contact separate from the clerk. Auditor and scrutiny can have read-only access to the accounts and to hall or allotment bookings. This is a package operated by the clerk.

Is this an alternative to Scribe, EDGE, Parish Online or CloudyIT?

Not really. Those products each do part of the job well. None of them is the whole smaller-council year at this size. To cover what is offered here you would need all of them and still have gaps for the clerk to fill.

Why a waiting list on a brochure site?

Onboarding is real work. A “buy now” button you cannot honour is worse than a list.

Join the waiting list