CASH CONTROL

Abstract

Librarians rarely see themselves as business managers. We are offered few options for fiscal, accounting, or budgetary courses in our formal graduate training. More important, few of us consider that at some point in our careers we will have to manage a business — sometimes as custodian of a major financial enterprise, sometimes as manager of a small‐ to medium‐size department or library. But, from the reading room open only part‐time to the major research library, funds must be received, accounted for, and dispersed. There are fiduciary responsibilities in every library. Not only are there the obvious responsibilities for payroll; the control of acquisitions; the purchasing of operating supplies, equipment, and furnishings; there are also responsibilities for the handling of cash in many libraries. Fines, photocopy services, database services, interlibrary loan, equipment and facilities rentals, and book sales are common sources of cash transactions. At a minimum, there is usually a change fund to provide coins for public telephones and photocopy or other vending machines. The procedures for receiving, handling, controlling, accounting for, and reporting on cash receipts are as numerous and variable as the libraries themselves.

Citation

Yavarkovsky, J. (1988), "CASH CONTROL", The Bottom Line, Vol. 1 No. 1, pp. 34-35. https://doi.org/10.1108/eb025099