All companies make small daily purchases such as office supplies, stamps, transportation, and other items. According to Lessambo (2018), petty cash is a “relatively small amount of cash that businesses keep on hand for the purpose of small transactions such as providing change to customers, postage expenses, highway tolls” (p. 29). In other words, petty cash covers small and sometimes unforeseen expenses that arise during the working day. By creating a petty cash fund, a business owner or company can maintain control and record expendurities with minimal cost and red tape. The following steps can help simplify one’s petty cash accounting:
- Pick a custodian (an employee who is “appointed to administer the petty cash and it is his/her duty to account for the expenses incurred out of petty cash fund” (p. 29)).
- Determine the size of the fund.
- Decide how much money the employees can spend.
- Select the largest amount for petty cash requests.
As with any other type of transaction, it is necessary to register petty cash transactions in a separate book. To improve the accounting of petty cash, the holders of the fund should require and keep a receipt for each transaction. The employees should also establish what they can and cannot spend petty cash on, for example, they cannot buy coffee with petty cash and can only make office related purchases. The receipt must contain “the amount being disbursed, the name of the person to whom the payment is being made, and the reason for the disbursement” (p. 29). Additionally, it is best to record all transactions, i.e. when someone puts money into the fund and when money leaves the fund. The journal entry must indicate an increase in the petty cash account and a decrease in one’s personal account. The entry should look similar to the following table:
Reference
Lessambo, F. I. (2018). Financial Statements. Palgrave Macmillan.