California Charter School Accounting and Best Practices Manual 171
worked at the event and feel much more should have been raised based on the number of attendees.
Questions and allegations follow, and the reputation of the staff member who counted the cash alone
is at stake with only his or her own word to defend it.
Cash controls are meant to protect people more than to catch a thief. Every year many staff members,
volunteers, bookkeepers and others are accused of stealing cash when differences exist. If a charter
school does not enforce strong cash controls, including witnesses and appropriately completed forms,
these individuals’ defenses are limited to their word.
Recommended Preventive Measure: Never allow money to be counted by only one person. Ensure that
money is always counted in the presence of a witness, and that both witnesses sign and date the cash
count form.
• After the cash is counted but before it is taken to the bookkeeper. After a fundraiser, often one
individual is given custody of both the cash and the only signed and witnessed cash count form, which
may be placed in a desk or locked le cabinet overnight, or put in the trunk of an individual’s car, or
delivered to the business ofce. Often that individual realizes that there is an opportunity to remove
cash on the way to the business ofce. Proper procedures are needed to provide controls, including
retention of duplicate cash count forms, and clear rules about where deposits may be placed after
a fundraiser but before being brought to the bookkeeper. Money should never be placed in a desk
drawer, locked le cabinet, or a trunk of a car. All money, and the cash count form, should be delivered
immediately to the bookkeeper and kept in a locked safe.
• Cash kept in desk drawers or le cabinets is not secure and can be lost or stolen easily, sometimes
after the person who placed it there forgets about it. These types of practices unnecessarily make
everyone a potential suspect, placing honest individuals, including school employees, volunteers
and students, at risk of suspicion, rumors and accusations, simply because the money was not
properly deposited with the business ofce bookkeeper.
• Without proper cash controls, the real thief can also easily blame someone else for the theft.
• Honest staff, bookkeepers and volunteers have put cash in their car with good intentions, then
forgotten about it, then had it stolen. Imagine this happening at a car wash with $10,000 left in the
vehicle’s trunk from the sale of fundraising gala tickets designed to benet charter school students.
Some employees have also intentionally left cash in their car for weeks to see if anyone noticed the
missing cash or deposit. The longer the missing cash goes unnoticed, the braver the potential thief
becomes and the greater their sense of ownership of the cash.
• After the money is counted in the presence of a witness and the cash count form is completed and
signed by both witnesses, individuals sometimes do not make multiple copies of the cash count
form for their own records; instead, they give the deposit and the only cash count form to another
individual for delivery to the business ofce bookkeeper. Subsequently, the bookkeeper receives
a deposit that is less than the individual who counted it remembers or less than they notated and
signed off on the form. The bookkeeper, appropriately, refuses the deposit to avoid being blamed
for the discrepancy, while the person delivering the deposit to the bookkeeper claims to have only
received the amount they delivered for deposit and/or claims they never saw a cash count form.
Without a copy of the cash count form signed by the counter of the funds and at least one witness,
there is no recourse in this situation.
Recommended Preventive Measures: Always use a cash count form, and ensure that it is signed
and dated by the individual responsible for the cash and by a witness. Make multiple copies of the
completed cash count form, and always keep at least one copy in a safe place, separate from the copy
sent with the deposit. Whenever possible, have two people transport a deposit to the school safe. If