You have just taken on a role as Accountant for a garden and giftware shop called Allenby Home & Garden. The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) has asked you to review the organisations internal controls and asks you to re-allocate roles between all staff and yourself to maximize internal control of cash, and improve current procedures to assist this. The current staff and roles are as follows:

Jane (Sales Assistant) works at the cash register which has a float of $200. Most in-store customers pay by cash, but if they are unable to pay immediately, Jane will sometimes allow them to pay in instalments for their purchase. When this is done, she will record the transaction in the sales ledger. Jane can also refund customers if requested by the customer. The cash in the till is reconciled every Friday by Jane against till records and updated on the accounting system against Cash Sales. The cash received during the week is given to Trish for banking, and the float is returned to the till.

Trish (Accounts Clerk) works in Accounts and prepares sales invoices for wholesale customers and inputs accounts payable invoices. When accounts payable invoices need paying she identifies these invoices, and writes a cheque from the cheque book stored in her top drawer. Trish also opens all the mail, and records cheques and cash received from credit customers on the accounting system, and does a weekly banking of all cash and cheques received. Trish also records electronic payments received against customer accounts, and does a monthly reconciliation of the bank statement against the accounting records. Trish reconciles and reimburses the petty cash tin that is kept in the safe and used for milk/coffee/tea purchases for the lunchroom and any other small ad-hoc purchases.

John (Chief Executive Officer) co-signs cheques with Trish.

Your role (Accountant) has not yet been fully defined other than managing internal controls, preparing general journals and monthly/yearly financial statements.

Required: i) Explain how you could re-allocate tasks mentioned above between existing staff and yourself to maximise internal control of cash? [15 marks]

ii) What additional procedures would you recommend to maximise internal control of cash?