Boring Money, Open Books: Running a Co-op Repair Pot Without a Mystery Line

The boiler picks a Friday. It always does. The room is booked, the workshop is full, and suddenly the co-op is having a very expensive conversation about a metal box nobody thinks about until it fails. Most small co-ops have a reserves line somewhere in the accounts. Very few have a repair pot with a name, a number and a rulebook that members can actually see. That gap is where quiet panic lives.

A sinking fund is not glamorous. It is not a growth strategy or a pitch deck slide. It is boring money with a job: replacing the things that keep the work going when they wear out. Roofs, boilers, laptops, the van, the fridge that has started making a noise like a distressed pigeon. The trick is not having one. The trick is running it in plain sight so nobody has to guess whether the co-op is being prudent or just vague.

Call it what it is, not ‘reserves’

‘Reserves’ is a word that can mean anything from ‘we have three months of running costs’ to ‘we have not looked at this since the last treasurer left’. Members nod at it and move on. That is not transparency; that is a fog machine.

Give the pot a plain name. The repair pot. The kitty for knackered things. The roof-and-boiler fund. In the accounts it can still sit under reserves, but in member meetings and the open ledger it should have its own line, its own balance and its own short explanation. Something like: ‘This is money set aside for replacing things we already own, not for new projects or wage rises.’ That one sentence prevents a hundred sideways glances.

At TBH Coop we are not fans of financial mystique. Open books work best when the labels are human. If a new member cannot understand a line item in under a minute, the line item is doing too much hiding.

Size the pot from the stuff you already own

You do not need a consultant. You need a spreadsheet, a walk around your space and an honest look at your kit list. Start with the things that would stop the work if they failed. For a small UK co-op that might be:

• the boiler and heating system
• the roof and gutters
• the laptop or desktop that runs the booking system
• the van or cargo bike
• the kitchen equipment, if you run a cafe or community meals
• accessibility equipment that is not optional

For each one, write down roughly what replacement would cost today and how many years you expect to get from it. A boiler might be 10 to 15 years. A laptop is more like four or five. A roof could be 25. Then divide the cost by the years. That gives you a rough annual contribution. Add them up. That is your starting target, not a sacred number.

In 2026, prices are not standing still, so build in a cushion. A simple approach is to add 10–20% for inflation and call it a day. Review it each year at the same meeting where you agree the budget. The point is not precision. The point is that the number exists, it is written down, and it can be challenged.

Decide what counts as an emergency — before the emergency

The awkward meeting is the one where someone says ‘surely this is what the repair pot is for’ and someone else says ‘no, that is ordinary upkeep’. Both people can be right in their own heads. The only way out is to agree the rules while the boiler is still working.

A useful split is:

• Ordinary upkeep: servicing, small repairs, consumables, replacing a fuse or a filter. This comes out of the normal running budget.
• Planned replacement: the thing you knew would die eventually and you have been saving for. This comes from the repair pot.
• Emergency: something fails suddenly, threatens health and safety or stops income, and cannot wait for the next budget cycle. This also comes from the pot, but with a clear record and a review at the next member meeting.

The tricky bit is the middle. A laptop that dies mid-project feels like an emergency, but if it was six years old and everyone knew it was on its last legs, it is a planned replacement that arrived on time. Write that distinction down. Put a spending threshold on it — say, anything over £500 from the pot needs a quick yes from two named people, and anything over £2,000 comes to a member meeting. That is not bureaucracy. It is a shared brake pedal.

Show the pot, don’t just mention it

A repair pot that only the treasurer can see is a rumour with a bank balance. Put it in the open books. A simple monthly or quarterly update is enough:

• balance at the start
• money in this period
• money out this period, with a one-line reason
• balance now
• what is next on the replacement list

That is five lines. It can live in the same place as your other open financial information. If your co-op uses a shared spreadsheet or a member dashboard, give the repair pot its own tab or card. If you use a paper ledger, give it a page. The format matters less than the habit.

At the AGM, do not just read the number. Tell the story of the pot. ‘We put £3,000 in this year. We spent £850 on the boiler service and a new pump. The roof is still on the list for 2029, and we are about £6,000 short of the target for that.’ Members can argue with that. They cannot argue with ‘reserves: £14,200’.

Keep it boring, keep it honest

A repair pot is not a slush fund and it is not a sign of failure. It is the opposite: it is the co-op admitting that things wear out and that members deserve to see the plan before the panic. It also stops the annual cycle of pretending the roof will last forever because nobody wants to be the person who raises it.

So name the pot. Size it from the stuff you already own. Write the emergency rules down while the kettle still works. And show the balance where members can find it. The boiler will still pick a Friday. But at least the Friday will not pick your co-op’s finances apart.