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

1. Take a sheet, Form 9, and enter the names of your charge customers in alphabetical order, commencing on a left hand page. To allow for future changes, leave a blank line before each name and one or two blank lines at the bottom of the page for sub-totals, etc. For clearness and permanence, these names should be put in from a black “record” typewriter ribbon. Write in the headings of the various columns as shown on Form 9. The object in placing the “total” column near the outside margin is to have it next the customer’s name, thus minimizing the chances of error in taking out the wrong total when we make our postings at the end of the month.

2. If our list of charge customers will require more than one sheet, take another Form 9 which we shall call Sheet No. 2 and proceed in a like manner, using the same side of the sheet as before. This should be repeated until all our charge customers are entered. Several blank lines are left at the bottom of the last sheet. Thus, when we have finished and have inserted the sheets in our book, we shall have a complete list of our charge customers all recorded on the left hand pages of our book, that side of each sheet that forms the right hand pages of our book being blank.

3. Now, in order to utilize these blank pages, thus avoiding unnecessary waste, we proceed as follows:—Open your book between Sheets 1 and 2; page 1 will then be on the left and page 2 on the right. This page 2 should now be prepared in a manner exactly similar to that used in preparing page 1, except that the customers’ names are on the right hand margin with the total column next inside. This is clearly shown in Fig. 7.

4. Prepare the blank sides of the other sheets in a similar manner and we shall then have two complete lists of our charge customers, one occupying the left and the other the right hand pages of our book, the confronting pages being practically symmetrical.

5. Let us assume that the Exchange has five separate departments in which charge sales can occur. We cut five sheets along the heavy broken lines shown in Fig. 7 and insert them between pages 1 and 2. Five more trimmed sheets are inserted between sheets (whole sheets) 2 and 3, and so on for the rest of the book. In order to identify these sheets if accidentally removed from the binder and to facilitate the making of entries, we print on each of them in large letters, the name of the department and the month to which they refer. This is best done lightly with red ink as shown (in black) in Fig. 7 where the sheet is marked STORE—AUG. This red ink lettering will not obscure the black ink figures subsequently made.

6. Let us agree to use the left hand pages for the first month’s account and the right hand pages for the next month’s account. Let us take the first trimmed sheet and mark it “STORE—JAN” on one side, and “STORE—FEB” on the other. Do similarly for the sheets reserved for the “market”, “lunch room”, and other accounts. The sheets containing the typewritten headings are not used for recording sales, but are used for guide sheets, for reasons to be set forth later.

It is easy to see from the preceding description that our charge book is a running account, and being always up to date, can be closed at short notice. When two months’ records have been entered, the trimmed sheets are lifted and filed, as will be described hereafter. Fresh trimmed sheets are again inserted in the proper places and the record proceeds as before.

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.