Splitting who takes fee money from who records it
Why the person who receives school fee payments should not be the one who records them, and how a small bursary can split the two jobs in practice.
By Achekam · · 4 min read · For Education businesses in South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya
At some schools the same person takes the cash a parent brings to the office, writes the receipt, captures it against the family's account and later reconciles the bank. It is efficient, and in a small bursary it can feel unavoidable. It also means that if a payment is mislaid, misallocated or quietly kept, the one person in a position to notice is the person who caused it.
Separating the handling of fee money from the recording of it is a basic accounting control. It protects the school, and it protects an honest bursary clerk from suspicion when something does go wrong. This article explains the rule, where fee money enters a school, and how two people can share the work so each checks the other.
The rule: whoever handles the money does not write the record
AccountingTools advises that employees who receive cash or cheques from customers should not be the ones who record those transactions in the accounting system. ACCA gives a classic illustration: in a post room that receives cash, the employee recording the cash should be a different person from the one who opens the post.
The reasoning is simple. If one person both receives and records, they can receive a payment and not record it, or record it against the wrong account, and the books will never show a gap. If two people are involved, the first person's takings must match the second person's records, and any difference shows.
AccountingTools puts the wider principle this way: no single person should control authorisation, recordkeeping and custody of assets for the same transaction. ACCA calls the arrangement internal check, organising accounting work so that no one person has absolute and independent control, and each person's work complements another's on a continuous, day-to-day basis. ACCA's article on internal controls sets out these control procedures, including segregation of duties, with examples.
Where fee money arrives at a school
Fee money reaches a school by three main routes, and each has its own risk:
| Route | Who handles the money | Main risk |
|---|---|---|
| Counter: cash or card at the bursary | The clerk on duty | Payment taken but not recorded, or recorded late |
| EFT into the school's bank account | The bank; nobody touches it | Allocated to the wrong family, or not allocated |
| Online pay page | The payment gateway | Little, if the gateway result posts automatically |
Counter cash is the highest-risk route because a person physically holds the money. EFT is lower risk because the bank holds it, but misallocation can hide arrears or overpayments. Online payments, where the gateway confirms them, take most of the human handling out of the process.
Online payments that record themselves
In Achekam, when a parent pays through an online pay link and the gateway verifies the payment, Achekam records it as a receipt against the invoice. It debits that gateway's clearing account and credits trade receivables, and the invoice shows as paid or part-paid. The amount is checked against what the link asked for, and a repeated notification never pays twice.
For segregation of duties, that is the ideal: nobody in the bursary handled the money or keyed the receipt, so there is nothing for one person to divert or misallocate. Every family encouraged onto the pay page is one fewer payment passing through a person's hands.
EFT: marked received by one person, checked by another
Plenty of parents pay by EFT instead. Achekam's pay page can show the school's bank details and a payment reference, and a staff member marks the payment received once it shows on the bank statement. Each bank account takes one currency.
Here the split works like this:
- The bursary clerk watches the bank statement and records each parent's payment against the family's invoices. Customer payments can be recorded against one invoice or spread across a family's invoices; a part payment leaves an invoice part-paid, and any extra is held on the family's account.
- The bursar, or another person, reconciles the bank. Bank lines are matched by suggestion and a person accepts each match; a line not yet in the books becomes a suggested journal that a person approves; and the reconciliation only completes when the difference is nil or every leftover line has an explanation.
A payment the clerk forgot to record shows up as an unmatched bank line. A payment the clerk recorded but that never reached the bank shows up as a receipt with no bank line. Either way, the second person sees it.
Arranging the split with a bursar and one assistant
A school bursary may have only two people. A workable split for a bursar and one assistant:
- The assistant takes counter payments, issues the handwritten or printed receipt, and hands the day's takings and receipt copies to the bursar each afternoon.
- The bursar counts the takings against the receipt copies, banks them, and records them against the families' accounts.
- The assistant records EFT payments from the bank statement.
- The bursar reconciles the bank and reviews the assistant's EFT allocations.
- A governor or the principal reviews the bank reconciliation monthly and signs it.
Where only one person works in the bursary, the review by a governor or the principal becomes the main check, and it should happen every month without fail. The approach to reconciliation review is covered in who should reconcile the bank, and similar front-desk risks in a medical practice in reception fraud controls.
Write the split down this term: who receives, who records, who reconciles and who reviews. If the same name appears twice, decide which job moves.
General guidance only, not advice on your own circumstances. Tax and payroll rules change: check the current position with the authority or your adviser.
