A university recently opened a parking station on its lower campus area for the benefit of the students. A guard has been engaged to patrol the car park and issue parking stickers to university students who submit an application form and show evidence of enrolment. When the sticker is affixed to the car, the student may park in the car park for six hours by placing a dollar in the parking meter. The guard inspects the stickers on all parked cars to determine that only students are parking in the lot. He also looks at the time gauges to ensure that the meter shows the necessary fees have been paid. The completed application forms are maintained in the guard's office.

Using a master key, the guard empties the meters weekly and delivers the cash to the university's central store department, where a clerk opens it, manually counts the coins, puts the cash in a safe and records the total on a weekly cash report. The report is sent to the university's accounting department. The day following the cash count, the university cashier picks up the cash and manually re-counts it, prepares the deposit slip and makes the deposit at the bank. The deposit slip, authenticated by the bank teller, is sent to the accounting department, where it is filed with the weekly cash report.

Describe any weaknesses in the existing system. For each weakness, recommend at least one improvement to strengthen the internal accounting control over the parking station cash receipts.