Community Advice

badpants writes:
If your group will be paying the invoice, then I would just deposit all incoming payments to your account. I would suggest having a good system for logging though. We used to have an Ooop's form and a Thanks So Much form. As volunteers would log order forms and payments, they would either fill out an Oops, as in "oops, you paid too much" or "oops you didn't send enough". The form would have basic info like student name/grade or teacher and then the order form number they turned in, number of items ordered and a total due amount. And then the check number and amount (or cash amount). We would keep a copy and send a copy home, as well as a copy of the order form. The other form was for families whose order forms had no discrepancies.

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Community Advice

dakajazz23 writes:
Thank you for your suggestions, an oops form sounds good instead of us writing it out like we did last time. My main issue though is, the teachers collect the money and order forms from the students in the morning every morning, where can the money be kept until we are able to count it and deposit it? We were told we can not have it put in the schools safe.

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Advice from PTO Today

Craig writes:
I have two suggestions. Number one, ask the principal if you can put your own locking safe in the office. You'll want something with a slot where teachers can insert envelopes. If you can't do that, here's a solution/procedure used by one of our contributors, Christy Forhan, in her words:
 
If money is being collected every morning, you need a trusted PTO rep there every morning to take the day's receipts. This is what we do for our Fund Runs. We have a two-person team who share the job for the entire two weeks of our collection period. We set up a formal logging-in procedure to reduce our exposure, and we do not allow anyone else to handle the envelopes except for our two trained volunteers. If money is brought to the office later in the day (it always is because some child finds his envelope in his backpack at lunchtime), then it goes into a box in the office for the PTO. It's not a safe, it's not the school's responsibility, it's just a box with a lid. The PTO rep will get it the next morning.

After the envelopes are logged on the master student log sheet, the collection team counts and consolidates the day's money, and prepares a deposit form for the PTO Treasurer. Yes, it's very labor intensive and it depends on the dedication of a couple super volunteers. But if your school won't allow money to stay on sight over night, there's really no choice but to pick it up daily. Personally, I have no qualms about having PTO money spend time at someone's home. It's nearly impossible to get to the bank for depositing every day. However, we DO pick it up from the school and log it every day, even if we don't go to the bank every day. Risk-free? No. But manageable.

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Community Advice

CMay2CK writes:
There is really no way around having a PTO representative collecting every morning. Set up a pre-arranged time to go to each class and collect the days receipts, or ask the teachers to turn them in during their break and pick up after all of the scheduled lunch periods. We also have a box in the teacher's lounge for all correspondence. It is not the best system, but it works. I, or another member of the board check the box twice a day. All receipts are then given to the President for couting and logging, then passed to the Treasurer for additonal logging and depositing.

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Community Advice

dakajazz23 writes:
Thank you everyone for your advice and suggestions, I really appreciate them! I will definitely bring all of these to the board for their opinons/approval. If anyone else has any advice or suggestions, I would love to hear them!

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