1) Elementary school with long-established PTO. Very informal. No processes. I volunteered to run Breakfast with Santa. My nature is to reconcile everything! We sold tickets for $1. Tickets used to redeem food, etc. Counted 500+ tickets at end of day. At next meeting treasurer reported about $400 deposit. Hmmm....
Sales Fundraiser later that month that went very well. Amount of sales and amount of deposits differed by about $1400. Big "hmmmm...".
Principal called in district auditor. Things went downhill from there. BUT - our new, improved 501(c)(3) PTO was born from the ashes of that fiasco.
2) Had a a great fundraiser, but that means long hours counting/reconciling cash. Faced with $45,0000 in sales, our treasure says, "I'm just going to take it home and count it this weekend. I'm a volunteer. What can you do, fire me?"
I trusted this person without question, but there is no way we were going to let that happen. Everyone was tired/cranky from hours reconciling the orders. Took some diplomacy to work it out that we really did need to follow our own good processes in counting the final funds for the deposit.
3) Shortly after we started at middle school, I volunteered to help decorate for a PTO-sponsored school dance. (PTO has lovely people. Very informal. No processes, except good faith.) The volunteer (school secretary) who had sold dance tickets at lunch handed me a big envelope of uncounted cash, because I was "with the PTO" and no one else was there. I wasn't an officer. She didn't even know my name - I had merely attended a PTO meeting! There was literaly no one else to take it, so my husband counted and documented it right away ($900.) I had to keep the cash for several days before I could find someone to give it to. Ugh!!
4) Not a negative story, but cute. Our (fabulous) treasurer worked as a budget analyst dealing with HUGE numbers in her job. Every once in awhile, she'd ask me (President), "How about we skip nickel and diming the budget/reconciliation and we'll just round to the nearest $100,000 like I do at work?" I wish! Wouldn't you love to have so much money you round to the nearest $100K?
Our PTO purchased a safe with a drop slot. So when the 2 people get done counting the money from the fundraiser, they drop it in the safe. The President and the Treasurer each have a key that is different. They both must be present for deposit day because one can not open the safe with out the other key. Once the deposit is ready for the bank, it is put in a self sealing bank bag. Everything has serial numbers on it that get logged. The bank opens the bag and the deposit numbers must match our statements. That way everyone is accountable and there is the very important paper trail.
If money is counted by two people and the deposit slip is photocopied, initialled by both counters, and the photocopy is put in a separate deposit notebook,
and then the cash/deposit slip is then handed to the treasurer for a night deposit...
voila! A paper trail. signed copy of deposit slip vs. bank statement deposit.
Hello! This year we have a Treasurer and a 'secretary to the Tresurer'. Our Treasurer is an accountant, and will be out of pocket in April. She's doing an amazing job, and we've decided that the finance manager software is the best way to go to keep everything on track. We're working on overhauling our money handling proceedures, so all of your suggestions are appreciated!
One suggestion that worked well last year: keep the cash box stocked with change ($50) in the school vault. It makes it very convenient from one event to the next. A note inside outlines the money counting proceedure. The first step is to count out the change up to $50, and replace it back in the box for the next event.
I would advise you to adopt the recommendations or atleast something similar to them. Our PTO did not have any method of counting money, making deposits, or keeping records of how much was made on what functions. Now they wish they had.
New officers took over in October. The Treasurer and myself (Secretary) have been working hard since that time trying to get the paperwork together to file form 1023 and get our taxes straight. It's been a nightmare. First off, we brought up the idea to join PTO today, so that we could get the help needed, and they were against it. Now we have figured out why! Seems there was very little cash deposited last year. IN FACT our Fall Festival had no cash deposited. Deposits written in the check registery do not match deposits on the bank statements. We had to pay the bank $100 to find out what some deposits were for as they came during a time in the year when we had no functions going on.Come to find out one of the checks on the deposit slip was from last years Treasurer, and it was a large amount of money ($800). So now we have found embezzlement.
Keep records!!! Minutes!!! Checks and Balances!!! Everything!! Don't let this happen in your school.
