I know AIM Insurance company requires an audit each year by an auditor or audit committee. (We conduct two aduits a year--one in Jan. and another in May). You may want to check with the Insurance Compnay about the relations between authorized check signers.
I guess I have the opposite problem. I am the PTL President this year and my husband got "volunteered" to be the Treasurer. I questioned the "rightness" of this -- should 2 people in these positions be married? (we had the same experience in scouts a few years back, only with a different couple and thus we made the rule that the top committee people could not be husband/wife)
We both can sign the checks, as well as the VP. Our statements go to the school, but I receive them unopened, so there's no point to that either
really -- no checks and balances there.
Honestly, the only reason my husband took the Treasurer position was because last year's left the school and the person who was going to take it was a self admited terrible record keeper.
We have been questioning how much we, as Pres and Treasurer, can okay to spend without going to the committee. There doesn't appear to be any rule in our group about this. We have limited it to under $100 ourselves.
Our next biggest problem is how much money is spent overall by our group. And this probably belongs elsewhere on the forum, but I'm new at this. Every time there is a shortage of cash in the school or the Church, the PTL is the first person looked to to pick up the tab. Then we have teachers and people telling us "PTL has always paid for....."
We have very poor records from previous years and have a hard time telling exactly what the PTL has done in the past. For example, the PTL pays the teachers to attend the meetings. This has been going on for years, but noone seems to remember who started it or when. Last night's issue was coaches stipends. It was one of those "PTL always paid it" but we have no record of it. And if we begin doing that, where does it end? Do we pay the volunteer who cooks lunch 2 days a week because she is giving more of her time than a coach? What about the mom who helps in the Pre-K class a couple days a week? Or the Library? You see what I mean, I hope.
My husband and I are trying to control the spending and use the funds on what benefits the kids the most. The argument can and has been made that the coaches benefit the kids. But so do the rest of the volunteers. That's why they are there.
I'm sorry this is so long. I am new at this position, and have been looking for answers for a few months now. We will be looking at the PTL Consitition in the next 2 months and making amendments. I was looking at the pages about by-laws and saw a lot of help there also.
Thank you for understanding and helping me out in any way you can!
Thanks for all the feedback. I guess my first step will be to make sure all the statements and Books stay at the school. They currently do not and I haven't seen a real 'statement' as of yet.
Is it normal for all the chair persons to see the statements on a regular basis? I would think so.
If I can get support from our principal and one of the teachers that helps our PTO most, I think it can be handled in a good way.
I guess I was in the same situation. My husband was President, and I was Fundraiser. But we always made sure there was another person there when we dealt with money, and there were several other people on the bank account. Also, the statements went to the school. We went out of our way to make sure that noone had the slightest reason to accuse us of anything.
The idea of setting the "precedent" is an excellent one. It makes the point without accusing them or implying anything. Just get your checks and balances in place so that noone can ever have a reason for accusing, then everyone will feel better about the whole thing.
How funny... I was reading the first post and began thinking about how to tell you about our situation... when I got to JHB's post, I realized I didn't have to...
Last year our pres and treasurer was a married couple. We are now waiting for restitution as well.
The way to get it across without hurting anyone's feelings? Statistics would be one way, but I think that everyone will understand this too:
"We don't think this applies to this year, but if we let this continue, it sets a precedent for years to come. Let's face it, not everyone is as honest as our current prez and treasurer".
As far as solutions - I've found that some of this is just taken too personally when handled within your group. If you can pass the buck to a third party and make it a routine business practice, that can help.
Ways of making this happen could include citing something from the IRS (probably won't help here) or some other authority or advisory body.
When I first tried to input cash control policies, some people were resistent just because they felt my request was personal. But when I got the school auditor to provide a generic letter of accounting practices the district expected any school organization to follow, then it was fine. Someone ELSE was making it happen, we were just having to follow the rules, it wasn't personal, yada yada...
