Reconciliation
One of the many tasks that the finance department must perform every day is to count the remaining cash in the office and balance it against the book value of accounts; this is a critical step in order to know precisely how much money the USA Pavilion has, because the account balance that can be checked electronically only tells part of the story. As soon as cash is dispersed to a person or department, the value muse be recorded and subtracted from the previous total to calculate the current balance. For example, if the Dance America department needs 400 RMB to pay for some special fabric for a costume, the department head will come to the finance department and explain it; we will then either advance the money or instruct him to prepay and submit an expense report for reimbursement. If the money is to be prepaid, we make a note in the journal and have the department representative write a letter with details for us to keep on file. If a shipment of office supplies arrives at the USAP, it will most likely already have been paid for; if not, the deliverer submit’s the invoice and we disperse cash accordingly. In June, we had a problem with one of the printers that Dell donated to us, so the IT department head received an advance payment to use on a new printer from Best Buy. We recorded both the initial payment to him and the refund of change when he returned. Most computer parts have been purchased using this method of payment, though several times we had to reimburse various IT department employees for their purchases.
Other than equipment purchases and expenditure reimbursement, we also must record the payment of stipends to the student ambassador employees and the Chinese volunteers who represent our pavilion and are not paid by direct deposit like other staff members. The fact that the stipends are all paid in Chinese RMB notes complicates the reconciliation process in two ways: first, the estimated amount of expense reimbursements and student stipends must be withdrawn from the bank weekly and second, three student ambassadors are authorized to disperse the funds.
On Mondays, the supervisor of our student ambassadors and volunteers prepares the payroll spreadsheet that compiles names and payroll amounts, and subtracts penalties based on absences/late arrivals. Once we have that list, we combine the amount of cash on hand with the estimated expenses to reimburse and the payroll amount to students, and then we know how much to withdraw from the bank. Although most of this passes through our hands, the final review and approval of our CFO and/or his assistant are required to make out the withdrawal slip for the bank. Two of the finance department’s student ambassadors would ride to the bank, withdraw the money, and return to the pavilion to begin dispersing stipends for the day. That is when the second problem arises: 3 different people are authorized to give out stipends, so each must know what the others have done and the job must be coordinated to ease reconciliation at the end of the day. We must 1) count the cash into equal stipend payments, 2) ask the student to recount and sign in their designated signature column 3) sign our own names and record date dispersed in their designated columns. If several students arrive at once, as they often do, it can be very distracting and sometimes a signature or date can be omitted. Although the students arrive to collect their stipends during their breaks, we must be sure to remember not to allow the student ambassadors to rush us into making mistakes. This last issue has caused some problems with recording that have led to frantic calls to students asking if they forgot to sign and leaving work late because we couldn’t figure out why the numbers were wrong. There was a day when two of the students in the finance department calculated large discrepancies, and for 3 days there was no solution; we spent hours watching video surveillance of every place the money had been, recounted the cash and all of the week’s reimbursements several times, but at last it was clerical error that had resulted in the miscalculation and there was no actual missing money. This is a lesson in the importance of separation of duties and responsibilities in the workplace, even within a single department.
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