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Continuing Education Cash Receipts How Should the District Properly Account for Money Collected? While the Board is responsible for providing adequate oversight of the Department’s operations, which includes adopting written policies over cash receipts, the Coordinator is responsible for overseeing the Department’s day-to- day operations. Department employees should maintain accurate and complete cash receipts records, using press-numbered, duplicate, itemized receipts which indicate the form of money collected (i.e., cash, check, money order) and the payer and date, to help ensure that all money collected is properly accounted for. The Department keeps the money collected in a locked cabinet until it is remitted to the Business Office. Both the Coordinator and the clerk have access to the cabinet. Deposits should be made in a timely manner and then subsequently reconciled to Department records (i.e., cash receipts documents) to ensure all of the money received was deposited intact. Oversight becomes particularly important in operations that do not have adequate segregation of duties. If one person, such as the Coordinator or the clerk, performs, or has access to perform, nearly all financial duties (e.g., receives or has access to cash, maintains the Department’s records, creates class rosters and prepares deposits), it weakens control over the cash receipts process. When it is not feasible to properly segregate incompatible duties among Department staff, sufficient mitigating oversight by District officials, such as the District Treasurer (Treasurer) who is the official custodian of all District money, should be performed to help ensure that cash receipts are properly accounted for. The District Can Improve Its Continuing Education Cash Receipts Process We examined the Department’s cash receipts activity and found weaknesses in procedures. We found no significant discrepancies when comparing participant registration forms to cash receipts recorded in the Department’s revenue ledger and to bank deposits. However, without duplicate press-numbered, itemized receipts, there is no assurance that all course registration fees paid to the Department were properly accounted for. Further, both the Coordinator and the clerk perform, or have access to perform, all of the same functions in the cash receipts process. As a result, incompatible duties (of receiving and having access to undeposited cash receipts and updating participant registrations and class rosters) were not properly segregated or mitigated by sufficient monitoring and oversight. These exceptions occurred because the Board did not establish a written policy and District officials did not develop detailed procedures to provide guidance 2 Of f ic e of t he New York State Comptroller