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

Credit Transactions.

We shall now take up the procedure to be followed in recording any and all credit which we allow to customers for overcharges, goods returned, etc. It is apparent that such transaction must occur in any business. Accurate track should be kept of them and they should be handled in the most efficient and time-saving manner possible. Each such transaction results in a credit against our Bills Receivable and a charge or debit against the particular department involved.

As before stated, the clerk who receives the goods that are returned to us makes out a charge sales slip, marks it “CREDIT” and keeps the duplicate, giving the original to the customer. It is usually the rule that nobody other than the Steward or the Exchange Officer himself has authority to give customers credit in this way. In the evening, the clerk hands in these credit slips with his report. When the Steward makes up his report on Form 4, after verifying the clerks’ reports, he simply enters these credits in the last column on his Form 4, totals them and describes each separate credit transaction on the back of his report. All the data relating to the charge sales (and credits given) during the day that are shown on the face of Form 4 are abstracted to the appropriate line of Form 7, which latter sheet gives us in concise form all the data we need concerning our charge sales for the month. The credit slips are gathered up and placed with the filed charge sales slips relating to the person who returned the goods to us. At the end of the month, preparatory to making out our bills, all credits are entered in the column headed “Credit” on Form 6, and are checked against the totals shown on Form 7. This avoids the necessity of entering each credit transaction on a separate line of Form 7 as such transaction occurs. Even if the credit slip were lost, no error should result, because we check the total credits entered on Form 6 against the total credits on Form 7 before we start making out our bills. If these do not agree, we must check both Forms 6 and 7 against the credits shown daily by the various Forms 4. We also have another check in the triplicate copy of the credit slips that has been filed away.

Below is a graphic chart which shows how to handle this system of charge accounts. It shows how the various records experience a continuous process of summation until they finally reach the ledger and the customer’s bill, and how the accounts can be checked as we go along, thus avoiding errors. Solid lines show posting operations, broken lines show possible checking operations.