The 2 Envelopes

Within my teams, I have a position of a group Treasurer who has official and unofficial duties.

Among the unofficial duties include the management of the group monies and petty cash for the purpose of payment to meeting venues for meals and meeting facilities.

Every member will settle his meeting dues, on a monthly basis to the Treasurer. The Treasurer will keep a master record as a paper trail.

Now when it comes to payment, the venue will prepare one bill at the end of the function/event and the Treasurer will settle this on the day itself.

Now there could be balance from this as some members may be absent, and therefore, beyond the minimum pax required to be paid for, there is no need to pay for any members not present.

Therefore this extra monies will go into another account known as the Petty Cash.

So, all in all, the SilverOcean Accounting System is the simplest in the world. You only need 2 envelopes!

Envelope 1: to keep all dues collected from the current month from members and settle the weekly bills for the current month. No one is allowed to be in arrears. If any member doesn't settle by the 2nd week of the current month, must be denied entry into the meeting. Period. No need to debate, discuss, chat, anymore. No money, no honey and in that regard, no money, no entry, literally.

Therefore, any balance from this Envelope 1 is then transferred to Envelope 2: where we hold the Petty Cash.

Simple? Very!! None of this debit, credit mumbo-jumbo!

All you need is 2 envelopes. I will provide them for you!

On the last day of the month, I will request to all Treasurers to report what is the new balance inside the Petty Cash, which is the Envelope 2. I don't want to know anything else. Hey, life is complicated enough as it is, so why complicate it further with yet another statement of account with them debit and credit shit!

And yet, I receive spreadsheets with accounting jargon of debit and credit and I cringe!

Why do I cringe? Because the bloody statement would fail to tell me the only thing I am interested in. Which is: what the hell is the balance in the Petty Cash as of the last day of the month after all weekly bills are paid.

So, I am now in the process of buying some good quality envelopes which will last at least 6-months, to co-incide with the term the Treasurers serve the team.