Post Exchange Methods / A Manual for Exchange Stewards, Exchange Officers, Members of Exchange Councils, Commanding Officers, Being an Exposition of a Simple and Efficient System of Accounting Which Is Applicable to Large and to Small Exchanges Alike.

by Paul D. Bunker

Consolidating Charge Sales Monthly.

The form in which we have placed our daily records of credit sales lends itself very readily to a process of summation or consolidation. The manner of doing this is as follows:—

1. Prepare a second double list of our credit customers exactly as described above, except that the columns, instead of being headed with the days of the month, are labelled with the names of the various departments, as shown in Fig. 8. Let us call this Form 6. Blank sheets trimmed along the heavy broken lines, shown in Fig. 7, are inserted as before, no recording being done on the typewritten sheets—they are simply guides or indices to the various lines and columns.

Figure 8. (Reduced in size)

2. All these sheets are bound in a separate book to facilitate the work of posting at the end of the month. Experiment seems to prove that this is better than binding these records in the same book with the charge sheets just described. This, for the reason that a clerk is apt to waste too much time in continually turning pages back and forth and is also more liable to make errors in posting.

3. Immediately after the end of the month, Form 7, is checked against Form 9 as previously described. We then take, say, the “store” charge sheets (Form 7) and enter on Form 6 the total that each customer owes the store. We do the same for every other department, also entering the balance remaining unpaid from last month in the column provided for the purpose. We also record in the proper column any credit we have given our customers during the month for goods returned, overcharges, etc.

4. By using the adding machine, we find the total of each department’s column on Form 6; it should equal the total charge sales for that department reported on Forms 7 and 9. If it does not, the error must be found and corrected before proceeding further. These totals, when correct, are entered at the foot of their proper columns on the last sheet of the record. Now add these column-totals on the machine and enter the result in pencil at the foot of the “Total” column on the same last sheet of this Form 6 record; it should check against the grand total of the charge sales for the month reported on Forms 7 and 9.

Figure 9. Actual size

5. When all postings to our Form 6 are complete, we station one clerk at the adding machine and one is prepared to make out our monthly bills or statements of account, using Form 1, shown in Fig. 9. Some person reads off Form 6 the name of each customer and the total charges against him by each department. These items are added on the machine and simultaneously entered by the bill clerk on Form 1. The adding machine operator reads the total of the items he has added, which total is entered by the bill clerk on his Form 1 and by us in the column headed, “Total” on our Form 6.

6. Any credit due the customer is read off to and entered by the bill clerk on the statement. He then figures the balance due the Post Exchange, which balance should agree with that figured independently by the person reading from Form 6.

7. When the last bill has been made out, take the printed strip from the adding machine and find the sum of all the totals that have been read off by the operator. This sum should equal the pencil total described in Par. 4 above and checks the correctness of the account. If a “Duplex” adding machine is used, this does not require extra work. If the accounts do not “jibe” and the error cannot be found, take in rotation the charge slips that you have filed against each customer and add them on the machine, making a separate total for each customer. This should locate the error. If the accounts check, however, (and they should if the previous checks have been made properly) this laborious operation is unnecessary.

All our bills are now ready for mailing, and they are made out correctly. In order to obtain the full benefit of this method, our bill forms should require the minimum amount of writing. The form shown in Fig. 9 gives satisfaction. It is a 3 × 5 inch card and therefore fits standard size card index drawers; it is easily handled and will go into a note size penalty envelope without folding. The appropriate month can be stamped in and the name of the customer entered during spare moments throughout the month, so that the only work necessary at this time is to write in the figures. If the lines of Form 1 are “typewriter spaced”, that is, six to the inch, and the form is not too heavy, it can be placed directly in the adding machine and the various amounts printed on the card. The names of the various departments should be printed on this card in the same order in which they occur on Form 6. In fact, much work will be saved if some specific scheme of sequence or relative order among the different departments is invariably followed.

The writer does not know of a more economical or efficient system of handling the bug-a-boo of “getting out our monthly bills” than that just described. Sometimes, a “duplicating bill-book” is used, but it is a wasteful and inefficient method when compared to this. One of the principal advantages of the system lies in the fact that it is unnecessary to keep a private ledger account for any of our charge customers. If we were to do so, we should simply repeat information that we already have. It will be remembered that we have filed away our triplicate record of each day’s charge sales, which record describes in detail the particulars of every sale made on that day. From this, should the necessity arise, we can reconstruct our whole charge sales record for the month. We have also on file (until the bill is paid) another copy of each charge sales slip, filed according to the names of customers, which, in itself, constitutes one side of the ledger account that would be kept under the old system. These, together with the records previously described, amply warrant the abolition of customers’ private ledger accounts. Another great advantage of this system lies in the ease and rapidity with which the books can be closed at any time.

Attention is invited to the note at the bottom of Form 1. This is a labor saving item that is in accord with the practice of many up-to-date houses—to regard a canceled and endorsed check as the best form of receipt. Hence, if a customer pays his bill by check, it is unnecessary to receipt the bill and return it to him, our endorsement on his check constitutes his receipt. This same procedure can be made to apply to companies, etc.; also, if the company commander will use the sales slips as his sub-vouchers for the expenditure.