As long as you any have TWO persons that need to sign every check, you might want to instead focus on, who is auditing the books on a yrly basis; and is it someone WITHOUT check signing authority. Theres your check and balance, in the audit.
And in the event the co -signers take liberties or make purchases(that pass audit)that the membership doesnt agree with,then they will soon be voted out anyway, so theres another check and balance, the rules about voting out officers.
Even though you might trust the current principal and secretary, you must always plan for the future. What if.... you get a new principal who is not quite so trustworthy or on the side of PTO.
We must have 2 signatures on our checks, but the principal along with the President and Treasurer are authorized to sign. The problem we are facing now is that the Presdient and the Treasurer are both school staff. I worry that they will feel obligated to follow the principal if she were to ask for funds that haven't yet been approved.
If I could go back and do it all over again, I'd recommend that we not allow the principal to be an authorized check signer.
<font size=""1""><font color="#"black"">Liberalism is not an affilation its a curable disease. </font></font><br /><br><font color="#"gray"">~Wisdom of Shawnshuefus</font><br /><br><font color="#"blue""><font size=""1"">The punishment which the wise suffer, who refuse to take part in government, is...
Originally posted by dlf: I don't have a lot of time right now but just would say--I wouldn't do it. Separation of church and state if you will. Well not really but do you really want the principal and the school sec to be privy to your finances. Whilst we would absolute positively consider any financial support requests by our principal (and make it a priority to fund) I would not care to have anyone but the PTO in the books...d
I agree -- only our elected officers have access to the checkbook. We give the principal a board seat, and that is about as much power as we felt would be appropriate.
Technically, it takes three of us to cut a check -- Treasurer writes it out and two of the Secretary, VP, or President sign. On top of that, most expenditures have been through the board or the membership.
If the prncipal could write a check and sign it and have her ecretary be the second sig, they could short-circuit the whole process, which is bad, even with the best intentions.
If you don't expect too much from me, you might not be let down. <img src=images/smilies/smile.gif>
I don't have a lot of time right now but just would say--I wouldn't do it. Separation of church and state if you will. Well not really but do you really want the principal and the school sec to be privy to your finances. Whilst we would absolute positively consider any financial support requests by our principal (and make it a priority to fund) I would not care to have anyone but the PTO in the books...d
I can understand having the principal on the account, but why does the sec need to be on too? I would be afraid that setting it up that way would make it too easy for the principal to write whatever checks she wants without PTO approval and the sec might feel obligated to go along with it since she works for the principal.
