And so, having been (joint) treasurer at St Columba's since a few weeks after graduating in the summer of 2009, I'm finally stepping down at the end of the year.

Why?

Fair question. Having a time-consuming and technical role is the perfect go-to excuse to avoid doing anything else for the church, and I had polished up the IT involved to significantly cut the hours required.

Did things get better in nine years?

CAF Bank's online banking web interface sure didn't, but at least (contrary to what some people still think) it is possible to have a system where two people authorize all outgoing payments.

We already had a pleasing number of people donating by monthly standing order when I took over, but these days there are only two (soon to be one) people left who regularly send in cheques.

Suppliers, visiting preachers and hirers have all got much more adept at receiving and sending payments electronically. I haven't actually gone through with my threat to destroy all our cheque books, but the number written each year has finally dropped to match the number of fingers on less than one hand.

We do still have one supplier who accepts BACS payments but "doesn't have online banking" so continues to send us reminders by post to pay their invoices - until the end of the month when it becomes apparent that we have.

Cash in the plate on Sunday has dwindled in proportion to the rise of standing orders, but still adds up to a fair bit.

The level of paperwork required every 24 months to prove we're not international money launderers continues to be a pain in the posterior for an organisation staffed by part time volunteers.

Charities need to shut up and take our money

One continued irritation is transferring the results of our "special collections". The idea is simple - six times a year, we have a retiring collection for a worthy cause. We pick two charities who do work locally in Oxford, two UK-wide and two international. We claim all the Gift Aid we can on the money, and then send the balance to the charity in question. This is usually very tedious as charities large and small often don't publish details for donations to be made via bank transfer. More often than not they do have a means to donate by card, so I can do that and claim the amount back personally - but this is messy as they insist on using details harvested this way to send you postal begging letters for years afterwards (MS Society, I'm looking at you). A particular favourite was Citizens Advice Oxford (earlier this year) who we ended up blindly posting a cheque to as they have no details on their website about how to donate.

Will I miss it?

Sort of, but I'm busy enough these days that having the hours of my life back will be very, very nice indeed. And nine years is long enough that one is in danger of becoming a single point of failure.