Have Checks & Balances in Money Handling

Here is another reminder from the pages of Making Money Is Not Illegal, Immoral or Fattening:
     “Let’s say you have somebody who comes in every day, opens up the safe, pulls out the drawers from the previous day, reconciles each one of the drawers back to whatever you have in the drawers on a regular basis, makes up a deposit, sits down at the computer, puts a little note in there on what the deposit is going to be, puts the money in a bag, puts it back in the safe, and goes about their day doing whatever they’re going to do.
     “Then at the end of the day, they get this bag, they take it to the bank, and they sit down in front of the banker, who counts the money, signs the deposit slip, and gives it back to the employee, who goes home, knowing the bank’s got the money. When that person comes back to work the following day, they go into the computer system and put a check mark next to the deposit, meaning it was all there, and they go about their day.
     “But wait. Let’s say that at the end of the month, you get an accounting of all your deposits and all your expenses, and the same person who did all of that stuff before is the same person as the one reconciling your checkbook.
“Unless that one person doing it all is you—the store owner/operator—a good system has developed a bad problem. There are not at all enough checks and balances in that system. If you have a money handling system with a problem like that, you are going to take a financial hit sooner or later that will dig into your profitability. It is just a matter of time.”