Even though we were a separate entity, our PTO had some responsibility to the school district that we had good practices. When we were getting ours established, the school district auditor gave us a one pager of basic things. It probably included that. Why don't you check with yours to see if they can furnish a general list of good accounting practices.

This was a page with bullets of things like 2 signers on each check, requiring receipts for all reimbursements, 2 people present to count checks, annual audit, monthly reconcilation of bank statement. Very high level but practical.

The IRS has some rules regarding receipts being required for certain types of expenses (if you were looking for a way to go to sleep and up for searching the IRS website for the term "expense substantiation," I'm sure you could find a bunch of stuff), but it sounds like what you're looking for is some rule that says every expense must be properly documented, and I don't think you're going to find it anywhere. One reason is that even the IRS does not require a receipt for every little thing. It's not uncommon for companies to reimburse for small expenses (say under $25, or under $10) without a receipt.

Rather than changing your bylaws, which usually requires something akin to an act of God, this would be a good thing to have as a "standing rule." Usually standing rules are for administrative things such as this, and they only require the approval of a smaller body (like your officers or executive committee) to change. What I don't know is that whether when you first establish standing rules, if they have to be approved by the general membership, or if they can just be established by the smaller group. I seem to remember that when I helped start up a PTA a couple of years ago, the officers just did the standing rules on their own; they were never approved by the general membership. Not that this makes it right, but that was never questioned by anyone.

By-laws or official policy needs to state what you need. Also have an official form. Will you accept a photocopy of the receipt or do you need to have the original? Some people need to keep the original for their own records because they bought something else at the same time.

Do you have anything in your Bylaws that would support it? Also have the forms available in the school office or at your PTO meetings so that they know that the forms must be submitted.

Cindy

Everyone in the world knows that in order to be reimbursed for an expenditure you need to provide the receipt proving what you spent. Correct? Besides it being common sense is there any official thing in writing somewhere that spells this out like Robert's Rules or something like that? We are having issues and I would love to have a "legally official" stance to take at our next meeting. I swear there should be a common sense clause in life.
Thanks