Membership Toolkit and Volo Cash cover different halves of running a PTA. Membership Toolkit (MTK) is a platform for the public side of your organization: the website, the member directory, the calendar, volunteer sign-ups, email, and online sales. Volo Cash is built for the treasurer: expense submission, approvals and signatures, the budget, and the books.
I served as a PTA treasurer for three years across two school districts and trained the treasurers who came after me. I’ve used Membership Toolkit as a parent and admin for over six years. Membership Toolkit does have its benefits and conveniences. For example, sales can automatically feed into your books. In my experience, we typically end up supplementing MTK with different sales platforms to meet the specific needs of each program (e.g. auctions need bidding, a talent show needs a seating map). Because the income is already segmented and most of my time is spent on the expenses side of things, I find it best to optimize for the money going out.
Plenty of organizations use Volo Cash in conjunction with Membership Toolkit, which is what this guide will cover.
Overview
Membership Toolkit’s design center is the organization: who your members are, what you are telling them, and what they are buying and signing up for. On its Essential plan ($550 per year as of September 2026) that includes a website, contact database, directory, calendar, volunteer scheduling, a newsletter and email tool, online sales and donations, and a mobile app. Accounting Tools arrive on the Premium plan ($850 per year).
Volo Cash’s design center is the reimbursement: a parent spends their own money, submits the receipt, the board approves it the way your bylaws require, and the treasurer pays and records it. The books, the budget, and the reconciliation sit underneath that flow.
| Membership Toolkit | Volo Cash | |
|---|---|---|
| Built around | Your organization and its members | The treasurer’s workflow |
| Website, directory, and calendar | Yes | No |
| Membership records and dues | Yes | No |
| Newsletters and bulk email | Yes | No |
| Online store and donations | Yes | No |
| Volunteer scheduling | Yes | No |
| Expense requests | No | Yes, no account needed |
| Bylaws-based multi-signer approval | No | Yes (treasurer plus president or VP, and so on) |
| Budget remaining shown while approving | Reported after the fact | Yes, in real time |
| Click-to-match reconciliation | Manual compare | Yes, and signed by a reviewer |
| Price | $550 to $1,150/yr (accounting on $850+) | as low as 1% of expense budget, capped at $500/yr |
How the two fit together in practice
Website content and membership management live in Membership Toolkit along with the money coming in from sales and other forms that create purchase records neatly tying back to your membership. Money going out, your accounting records, and all financial reporting happen in Volo Cash.
- A volunteer makes a donation via MTK.
- That donation, grouped with others, arrives in Volo Cash as a deposit through the automatic bank feed.
- Down the road, when our volunteer buys decorations for a fundraiser, they submit a request in Volo Cash.
- The submission and approvals are handled there, and your books reflect the reimbursement automatically.
Volo Cash matches the signing rules to your bylaws. A request that needs the treasurer plus the president, or any two of four officers, collects exactly those signatures and records each one on the form. Budget categories can carry a pre-approver, making sure the program chair can keep track of their budget. Other regular treasurer tasks have been optimized too, like receipt matching and click-to-match reconciliation.
Reconciling in Volo Cash: each statement line finds its match in your books as you click.
Migrating data
Volo Cash imports Membership Toolkit’s own reports. A mid-year switch does not mean typing a year of history back in.
Your past activity comes from the General Ledger. In Membership Toolkit, go to Accounting → Reports → General Ledger, pick the accounts and date range you want, click Refresh, then Download as Excel. Upload that file in Volo Cash under Books → Imports. You get to review everything and merge it with what you already have.
Your budget comes from the Budget vs. Actual report. In Membership Toolkit, go to Accounting → Reports → Budget vs. Actual, choose the fiscal year, and download it as Excel. Upload that on the Volo Cash budget page. Everything is ready for you to see budget use before approving or paying an expense.
When to use Membership Toolkit’s accounting
I would stay on Membership Toolkit’s Accounting Tools if:
- You are already on the Premium plan, have been using the accounting feature of MTK, and enjoy managing your books with that interface.
- Your reimbursements are already easy. If a single treasurer pays requests without collecting signatures from other officers, the approval workflow is solving a problem you do not have.
- You want one system for everything. Running two tools means two places to go, which is a non-zero cost.
When adding Volo Cash makes sense
- Your bylaws require more than one signature. Volo Cash collects each one digitally, in the way your bylaws require. Our guide to how PTA expense approvals work under your bylaws covers what those rules usually say.
- Reimbursements take too long. Easy submission, digital approvals, and two-signer check authorization mean a reimbursement can be paid without anyone leaving home.
- Treasurer tasks take too much time. Volo Cash is designed to take common treasurer workflows from hours to minutes.
The bottom line
These two tools cover different jobs. If Membership Toolkit runs your organization well, keep it. If the part that hurts is getting expenses approved, signed, paid, and recorded, that is what Volo Cash is built for, and the two sit side by side without either one getting in the way.
You can try Volo Cash free for three months, import your Membership Toolkit history, and see your own numbers in it before you decide.
For how both sit among the rest of the options, see the honest roundup of the best PTA treasurer software.