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

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.

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.

Settling Charge Accounts.

When any of our charge customers pays his bill, we make an entry in our cash book, giving to each such payment a separate line. We enter the amount of the payment in the column headed “Net Cash” and also in the column headed “Customers”. We do not enter any of this amount in the columns referring to the various departments because they have already been credited for their proper shares through the charge sales records and to do so again in the cash book would manifestly give them double credit for each charge sale. We also stamp “Paid” in the “Cash” column of Form 6, using a dating stamp that will fit neatly into this column. One using red ink is preferable. If only a part of the bill is paid, we enter in this column the amount received, extend the balance to the proper column and, at the proper time, carry it forward to next month’s account. Some book-keepers of the old school will keep a “blotter” or some such book wherein these payments are first noted, copying them at their leisure into the Cash Book. As the Cash Book is a book of original record, this is not only wrong, but is incidentally unnecessary labor and hence to be avoided. When payments like these come in, they should be taken directly to the book-keeper, who should immediately enter them in the Cash Book.