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.
Instructions
(a) Identify the internal control principles and their application to the cash receipts transactions of the Magical Elves Theater.
(b) If the usher and cashier decide to collaborate to misappropriate cash, what actions might they take?