Question

Magical Elves Theater

Magical Elves Theater is located in the Brooklyn Mall. A cashier’s booth is located near the entrance to the theater. Three cashiers are employed. One works from 1–5 p.m., another from 5–9 p.m. The shifts are rotated among the three cashiers. The cashiers receive cash from customers and operate a machine that ejects serially numbered tickets. The rolls of tickets are inserted and locked into the machine by the theater manager at the beginning of each cashier’s shift.

After purchasing a ticket, the customer takes the ticket to an usher stationed at the entrance of the theater lobby some 60 feet from the cashier’s booth. The usher tears the ticket in half, admits the customer, and returns the ticket stub to the customer. The other half of the ticket is dropped into a locked box by the usher.

At the end of each cashier’s shift, the theater manager removes the ticket rolls from the machine and makes a cash count. The cash count sheet is initialed by the cashier. At the end of the day, the manager deposits the receipts in total in a bank night deposit vault located in the mall. The manager also sends copies of the deposit slip and the initialed cash count sheets to the theater company treasurer for verification and to the company’s accounting department. Receipts from the first shift are stored in a safe located in the manager’s office.

Required:

1. Identify the measures in place to make sure that the cash receipt transactions are properly accounted for.
2. If the usher and cashier decide to collaborate to misappropriate/steal cash, what actions might they take?

Hasagama Middle School

Hasagama Middle School wants to raise money for a new sound system for its auditorium. The primary fund-raising event is a dance at which the famous disc jockey D.J. Rivet will play classic and not-so-classic dance tunes. Will Schuester, the music and theater instructor, has been given the responsibility for coordinating the fund-raising efforts. This is Will’s first experience with fund-raising. He decides to put the eighth-grade choir in charge of the event; he will be a relatively passive observer.

Will had 500 unnumbered tickets printed for the dance. He left the tickets in a box on his desk and told the choir students to take as many tickets as they thought they could sell for $5 each. In order to ensure that no extra tickets would be floating around, he told them to dispose of any unsold tickets. When the students received payment for the tickets, they were to bring the cash back to Will and he would put it in a locked box in his desk drawer. Some of the students were responsible for decorating the gymnasium for the dance. Will gave each of them a key to the money box and told them that if they took money out to purchase materials, they should put a note in the box saying how much they took and what it was used for. After 2 weeks the money box appeared to be getting full, so Will asked Luke Gilmor to count the money, prepare a deposit slip, and deposit the money in a bank account Will had opened.

The day of the dance, Will wrote a check from the account to pay the DJ. D.J. Rivet, however, said that he accepted only cash and did not give receipts. So Will took $200 out of the cash box and gave it to D.J. At the dance Will had Mel Harris working at the entrance to the gymnasium, collecting tickets from students, and selling tickets to those who had not prepurchased them. Will estimated that 400 students attended the dance.

The following day Will closed out the bank account, which had $250 in it, and gave that amount plus the $180 in the cash box to Principal Foran. Principal Foran seemed surprised that, after generating roughly $2,000 in sales, the dance netted only $430 in cash. Will did not know how to respond.

Required: Identify as many cash control weaknesses/ improper handling of cash as you can in this scenario, and suggest how each can be addressed.

Answer 1

Magical Elvis Theatre Case:

Controls in place :

• Rotating shifts of Cashiers
• Pre numbered tickets locking by Manger.
• Seperation of Usher point from Cash point
• Locked box for Ticket counter foils at usher
• Making Casg=hiers sign the collection sheet
• Reconciliation by Manager of Rceipt details after each shift
• Removing cash after each sheet and keeping at Manager's office
• Storing the daily collections in bank night vault
• Daily details along with recociliation sheets to Treasury

Missappropriation Scenario:

• Issue a forged Ticket to Customer and keep the amount seperate
• The usher tears the counterfoil , allows the customer in but doesnot put the forged ticket counterfoil in the locked box.

Hasagama Middle School

The control weaknesess and the right way to handle are tabulated hereunder :