Use Of Deposit Receipts

So, latterly, the deposit receipts have come to be used more exclusively for special deposits and for sums in excess of a certain fixed amount, $5,000 or, perhaps, $10,000.

The blank deposit receipts are in pads or books. On receiving the deposit from the customer, if a requisition slip did not accompany it, the teller asks the customer for one, or makes it out himself. On his being satisfied that the amount is correct he passes the slip through for the junior to draw the receipt. The blank receipts are attached to stubs, each stub being numbered the same as the receipt belonging to it. On the stub is entered the date, name and address of depositor, amount of deposit, rate of interest, and term of notice. Also, it has a place for the specimen signature of the depositor, which is taken unless he is a regular customer, having already given a specimen of his signature in a manner or place easy of reference. Any special particulars that might be required for identification are put down on the stub. The stubs are preserved and filed away so as to be easily referred to, and when a deposit receipt holder presents his receipt for renewal, or for withdrawal of the money, if he is not known, the stub is turned up and his signature examined.

List Of Outstanding Receipts

After the receipt is drawn, in accordance with the particulars given on the slip, the date and number of the receipt, the depositor's name and address, the rate of interest, and the amount, are entered in the deposit receipt register; when that is done the signatures of the accountant and manager are put on the document, they at the same time initialling the record in the register. The register is simply a record of the receipts, line after line, in the order in which they are issued. Afterwards, as the receipts are presented for redemption, they are marked off as paid, with the date of payment.

To balance them, it is necessary to go through the book, and from it to make a complete list of the outstanding receipts. The total should agree with the balance shown in the general ledger at credit of deposit receipts.

The regulations regarding the handling of paid deposit receipts are rather strict. In the institutions where the greatest care is exercised, the branches have to report full particulars once or twice a month of all receipts issued and paid, and are required to send all receipts reported paid and cancelled along with the reports that contain them to head office. The head office thus has a full and continuing record of the transactions at each branch; it also has possession of the documents or vouchers on which the cash payments or credits were made, or renewals issued. The object of this is to make fraud on the part of the officers more difficult.

Floating And Fixed Deposits

It will be understood from the foregoing that the current account balances represent floating deposits and the savings balances fixed deposits. The former are payable on demand; the latter after notice; for, though the practice is to allow savings bank depositors to draw their money when they will, without notice, the bank has the right to exact the notice whenever it chooses to do so.

When a depositor, opening an account, accepts the pass book from the bank and leaves his signature on a card, or in the signature book, in the eyes of the law he is regarded as having assented to the rules and conditions printed in his pass book. Among these rules is one which says: "The bank reserves the right of 'requiring ten (or fifteen) days' notice of all intended 'withdrawals."