BUCKS: Better Understanding of Cash Kontrol Systems.

• Author: Hara, Lloyd
• Position: Seattle, Washington's cash management training program

When the city treasurer's office found that $100,000 a year was being lost by poor cash handling practices in departments throughout the city, the response was an award-winning training program.

Even in the age of computers and modern technology, the City of Seattle Treasurer's Office discovered it had to revert to the basics of individual training to improve its cash handling practices to prevent and significantly reduce unexplained cash losses and paperwork errors. The City Treasurer's solution was to institute a comprehensive training program for all city cash handlers. Known as the BUCKS Program: Better Understanding of Cash Kontrol Systems - the training familiarized cash handlers with a newly adopted set of rules and procedures on cash receipting, collections, depositing and reporting.

The Need for Standards

The City of Seattle has more than 1,000 employees who handle cash transactions and annually collect in excess of $1.4 billion. Of those employees, only 45 work directly in the treasurer's office. There are more than 500 temporary and part-time employees who work and handle cash at the swimming pools, parks and recreation facilities. Except for the treasurer's office's employees, departmental cashiers have not received any formal cashier training.

Cashiers or cash handlers are usually entry-level employees, and cash receipting has been a decentralized process with no uniform rules, procedures or performance standards and only limited personal accountability. Despite this tradition of departmental independence and control, a need to handle cash more effectively had long been recognized. Studies conducted by the treasurer's office documented that approximately $100,000 had been lost annually by other city departments due to lack of training, security and lossprevention procedures.

The treasurer's office determined that tighter internal controls were necessary, that cash handling practices born from the notion, "because we have always done it that way" needed to be revised to accept the principles of accountability, accuracy, efficiency and timeliness.

Most employees in positions such as animal enforcement officers, life guards, building inspectors, etc., viewed money collection responsibilities as a minor portion of their jobs. Even those employees whose primary job was to collect money, such as parking attendants, solid waste site attendants or community service center employees, had not received formal training; their instruction consisted of on-the-job training usually taught by a fellow employee. This tended to downgrade the importance of money handling.

The Seattle City Charter proclaims the City Treasurer as the accountable official for all the city's cash collections, but prior to February 1989 it did not provide sufficient "teeth" to cause other department administrations to follow the treasurer's procedures and rules. Then an ordinance was enacted, specifically authorizing the City Treasurer to establish administrative rules for the receipting, handling and depositing of all city money and to institute a certification program for all persons who handle cash. The ordinance called for all city money to be deposited or receipted to the treasurer's office within 24 hours after acceptance; any shortage or theft of money was required to be reported immediately to the police and the City Treasurer for further investigative and corrective action.

The individual cashier certification program that the ordinance authorized provides a means for...