If the checks are made out to the school, then they ought to be deposited in the school's account.
I don't see why she needs to have "immediate" access to her funds; our librarian used to order books and just give the PTO the invoice, which was always payable within 30 days. Immediate access means no oversight, and that's a potential liability for your group.
this might cause problems when you do your tax returns, if you do tax returns, as you will need to class all the library money as income as it is under your tax id and also to be able to account for all outgoings with receipts for all spendings. If the account is mismanaged the problems will also come to your group, as it is part of your group's tax id.
Could the librarian not use the school's bank account to deposit her checks? if not, as treasurer, I would insist on a monthly statement of any accounts using your group's tax id, if nothing else, to make sure that your group's tax id is not being misused in any way.
Thanks for the response. We do have a fundraiser where proceeds are for the benefit of the library.
For the fines though, the checks are made out to the school, not the pto. I also think she wants to continue to have immediate access to the funds (not submit a reimbursement form to the pto).
Our PTO handles several things for the library -- not lost books, but "birthday books" (child chooses one to donate and have a sticker put in acknowledging the donation) and the book fair proceeds all go to the library; the PTO treasurer keeps track of how much is in the "library account."
The school librarian has checks for fines assessed for lost/damaged books. She uses the money to buy replacement books. She closed an old bank account used for this purpose because of high fees. She needs a tax id number to open a new account and was told to use the PTO tax id number. I am a new treasurer, but seems that this does not seem to qualify as a PTO account. Apparently the school does not have a tax id number and uses the PTOs. Any problems with doing this?
