Following are several items for consideration by the County Treasurer:

• There is a lack of segregation of duties in the Treasurer’s Office in that the same individual has the ability to collect, receipt, records payments, make the deposits, and reconcile bank statements.  We would suggest that the process be reviewed and that the controls be implemented in order to segregate receipting duties as much as is practical.
   
• A written policy should be prepared related to the cash collection and receipting process an adopted County-wide.  Included in this policy should be a description of the minimum acceptable documentation provided along with cash receipts to the Treasurer’s Office for deposit.
   
• The Treasurer’s computer system used to record cash receipts does not interface with the Controller’s general ledger system.  As a result, amounts are keyed in a second time by the Controller’s Office to post them to the general ledger.  With the new accounting system package being implemented by the Controller, we recommend that an interface be investigated.
   
• Currently, the County practice related to stale dated checks is to void them and not reissue them if the payee can not be located.  A policy should be established whereby such checks are escheated to the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.
   
• Due to a large volume of tax receipts received at the end of the discount period, tax receipts are taking in excess of a month to process.  The receipts are not deposited into the bank account until they are processed.  As a result, there is a large quantity of undeposited cash and checks maintained in the Treasurer’s Office.  There is a risk that receipts could be misplaced.  The county also loses potential interest earnings on the undeposited funds.  We recommend that receipts be deposited into interest bearing account when received.  Copies of the checks could be made and used for processing of tax receipts.