Help my petty cash isn't balancing!

[amalee]

Arrrgh! My petty cash tin has not been balancing for the last two months and I can't seem to find a way to rectify it. We have Sage accounts so the balance is different to what's in the tin and I don't know what to do! The tin always has more money than the Account says so what should I do!!??

[ponjee]

petty cash as in ACCOUNTING wise?

[ponjee]

petty cash as in ACCOUNTING wise?

[amalee]

Yep

[squarebear]

Check your accounting if you can't balance your cash.

[milly143]

How much is the difference between the 2 balances? Is it possible you have entered a transaction on Sage twice in error? When our accounts don't balance the only way to work it out is to go back to the date where it last balanced and check every entry since that day to find the error. I'm tempted to say that if it' just a small amount and you can't locate the error then just take the extra out of the tin and buy a pack of biscuits for the office.

[ummmm]

I'd do what Milly says...lol.

Check for the obvious first. The classic mistake of entering '96' instead of '69' That sort of thing..

[VHG]

Is someone stealing?

It is not unknown !

[ummmm]

The tin has more money...so sounds more like a mistake.

[spudqueen]

If the amount that you are wrong is divisible by 9 (eg £45) then it could be a simple error of entering eg £5 instead of £50. But ,as said before, you need to go back to when it last balanced and check all the entries for the next day.

[scotman]

If the difference is divisible by nine that can be caused by transposing any 2 digits.

[amalee]

thanks for all your answers but I've gone over and over it. checked all the receipts checked all the entries and pretty sure my adding up in the tin isn't wrong. Seems to me that someone put the money back in the tin and didn't make a note of it! I shall persevere and get to the bottom of this. :(

[milly143]

Just another thought, have you reconciled all the other accounts? I'm not familiar with Sage but use Quickbooks (a similar system) daily and it would be possible for me to enter a bill for a purchase made from petty cash but to accidentaly record that bill being paid from another account, such as the current bank account. The only real way would notice the error is when I went to reconcile the current account.

Also, have you asked around to see if anyone has put some money back in?

As it's petty cash, I can't imagine it is a large amount of money so I wouldn't worry yourself and waste too much time over it. It might be advisable to just go to your boss and tell them them of the discrepancy. As it's the right way round (i.e. no money missing) I'm sure they will tell you just to take it out as you can't easily find the error.