I agree with mum24. I feel like a bull in a matador ring! All of our 200 PTA units in NV require two signatures on the account, all of the resource books that go to all units in the US states to have two signatures. It is also a requirement of our insurance company but that's just an added rule.
I think that's a pretty good example of the real world. I would definitely require that the books be audited before anyone else takes them over, just so that the new person can't be held liable for anything if it's amiss. JHB also uses the same technique as I do, "The IRS requires that..." You don't have to be the heavy, and most people don't really like the IRS anyway! [img]smile.gif[/img]

We also have to have two signatures on all checks. There are three of us that are allowed to sign checks.

When I took over as Prez. I went to the bank with our new Treasurer and had them add us on to the account and take off the old Prez.and treasurer. They did it with no questions asked!At that point the new treasurer also asked for some missing statements(which they mailed to her a week later). The bank was very accommadating.

Definitely plan to establish a series of good accounting practices, including an audit - which can be done by an internal audit committee.

Often the big problem is HOW to transition to new, stricter controls without starting the year with a battle and/or appearing to accuse the officer of incompetency or wrong-doing.

I've said this before - I find that doing some of these "because an authoritative third party says so" can be magic. It achieves what you want without making YOU the heavy. For us, it was simply calling our district auditor and asking if he had any best practices he advised school groups to follow. He sent us this generic one page paper. It wasn't great or terribly detailed, but it gave us the ability to look at those who saw no need to formalize process and in wide-eyed innocence explain, "but we have to - the school auditor said so." No one argued too much after that.

IRS is another good one to quote.

You'll have plenty of your own battles to fight. Sometimes it's nice to sidestep one.

we have two people on our account. Each month the principal sees the bank statement and every person at the monthly meeting gets a detailed report on what checks were wrote and to whom. This list check numbers, amounts, dates, reason for. It also lists all deposits and what fundraiser they were from as well as outstanding costs. A few times a year all records are brought to the meetings so anyone can look at them. This past spring we filed our first 990 and had a outside professional financer (no charge) look them all over. This way you can clearly see that everything is on the up and up. I would worry about incomplete records, this isnt her money and there should be records for everything.I find that my principal has ALOT of pull in the community and if need be I would go to her and she has ways of making people talk..ha ha ha

Your post raised red flags all over the place with me.... Just look at the blog and you'll find tons of stories about PTO/PTA embezzlement--and yours is a situation that is just ripe for it.

I think you'll be hard pressed to find anyone who has only one person with access to the bank account. We only require one person's signature on checks under $500, but there are still three signers on the account.

You should easily be able to explain that you need at least one other signer on the account, to cover for the possibility that something happens to her. I don't see how she can argue with that. I would also recommend that bank statements be mailed to the school if they are currently mailed to her home, and opened by the president, then passed on to the treasurer.

For a school with 350 students, a range of $8,000-$15,000 seems to be one heck of a lot of money to be holding on to (and that's also a huge range for which to be unaccounted). What is your annual budget? If nothing else, I would explain to her that in order to be able to plan appropriately for activities and fundraisers for the upcoming year, it is absolutely critical that you have a good understanding of the finances. No need to have parents have to go through more fundraisers than they really need to....

An audit can be an excellent tool. Even if there's no fraud problem, it forces the clean up of the records and makes it easier to hand over things to the incoming treasurer, for one thing.

Do you operate independently from your school? Are you incorporated and/or tax-exempt? Do you have bylaws? Depending on your answers, we can give you other suggestions on how to handle this.

Unfortunatly last years prez seemed very intimidated by the previous years prez and only did what she was told. Basically the previous prez was still running the show. We haven't been given anything, bylaws, bank statements or even a firm answere on how much is in our account. Somewhere between $8000. and $15000. We asked the treasure to bring everything to our executive meeting last night and she only brought her typed version of everthing, and it didn't add up. She said she needed to work on it some more....We didn't think it was asking to much to get a copy of a bank statement so we knew where we stood before we got started. Now we arn't sure where to go without sounding like we are accusing her of something since she seems very unwilling to give us what we asked for. We are waiting to hear from our Principal but she is out of town.
Thanks for everyone's responses! I love this site!