70. Card Ledgers

Some savings banks, commercial banks and trust companies use a card ledger for savings accounts. The usual form is shown in Figure 53 on page 108. The proof of a card ledger is made by listing the balances on an adding machine.

71. Loose-Leaf Ledgers

The demands of modern business for multum in parvo, both as to space and time, have caused the introduction of many card and loose leaf forms. They all possess the great advantage of eliminating dead matter, if properly kept up. Many officials seem to think, however, that they will take care of themselves. The writer once saw a clerk go to the storeroom of a large corporation in search of a binder for a new record he was about to set up; finding the transfer binder of another office, which had been closed, he promptly removed the leaves, wrapped them up neatly in a piece of paper and labelled the package. Some months later the storeroom was cleaned out, and the sheets of that ledger were seen scattered among the rubbish. Transfer binders are too apt to meet the fate of the one just mentioned, to be depended upon for final records. The card system presents the greatest amount of danger of any of the loose forms. The cards must be removed from the "cans" or drawers and placed on the desk for recording. If a clerk is anxious to decrease the liabilities to prevent detection of his "borrowings" from the assets, what easier method could be devised than by removing a card at proving time and replacing it after the proof is made? Only the most complete system of counter checks can guard against this danger.

Where loose-leaf ledgers are desired, it is possible to prevent abstraction of leaves by having every sheet numbered when received from the printer and doling them out when needed. This is unsatisfactory, because the pages will not run serially in the ledger, and an attempt to prove that the sheets had not been misused would involve a check of all the transfer binders and current ledgers.

Another scheme is to have the ledgers locked with a high grade lock and to have the key kept by the general bookkeeper, who is charged with the personal supervision of the removal and substitution of leaves.

72. Substitute For Loose-Leaf Ledger

An inexpensive and convenient individual ledger, one that combines many of the good features of a loose-leaf ledger and has none of its disadvantages, is made and used as follows: A sufficient number of Boston ledger sheets to last two weeks or a month with one writing of the names of the accounts is sewed together with a manila cover. When the last day is reached, the balances are struck in a new section, the names having been first rearranged and written on the long leaves. The ledger may be made to look very much neater by having the names of the accounts written with a book-typewriter.

When enough of these sections have accumulated to make a volume, the bookkeeper or a trusted messenger should take them to the bank's bookbinder and have them bound in an inexpensive cover previously prepared. Arrangements may be made with the dealer to keep a supply of these binders on hand so that there will be no delay when a book is ready to be bound. The process will take but an hour or two. The bookkeeper has a very light book to handle and therefore the cost of an expensive binding necessary to carry a heavy ledger is saved. The transfer ledger is not in steady use and therefore a cheap binding is quite as serviceable as an expensive one that has seen anywhere from six to eighteen months' hard usage. The ledger, although possessing many of the good features of a loose-leaf system has the advantage of having been a bound book throughout its entire history.