Hi there,

Does your institution perform surprise audits on teller drawers? If so, who would perform these audits. Any feedback is appreciated.

Thanks.

We do suprise audits on teller drawers. These audits are done by me, I am the assistant vice president and my duties include compliance, internal controls, human resource, and whatever else needs to be done (we are a small bank and I wear many hats). I have heard that at some banks the head teller or supervisor would do them.

We have 48 branches. The Service Manager (Assistant Manager) is responsible for performing surprise cash drawer audits on each CSR every month. All CSR's are to be audited during the month. The audits are also supposed to be spread out throughout the month so that a pattern is not established (e.g. the manager always audits the CSR's the last week of the month - the CSR's would easily figure out when the audits are coming.)

I perform all surprise audits on my tellers as well as a monthly inspection for adherence to cash drawer limitations.

We actually have a group of individuals that perform the surprise audits. It consists of the auditor, HR, Security Officer, Compliance Officer, Branch Administrator, and IT Vice President.

We have 5 branches. Surprise audits (timing and staff to be audited) are dictated by me (the Auditor) either the teller supervisor or the COO at each branch performs this function. They are done every 3 weeks or so.

On a weekly basis, the teller supervisor reports cash limits to me for all drawers.

At my current bank it is done by our auditor and operations manager. At my old bank I as the security officer was asked to be responsible for it, but I always had the auditor help because our external auditors and examiminers always asked if they did it. The main thing is independence and swift action when significant problems are found. I don't think titles matter too much.

We have nine branches, and all tellers must be audited at least once within 90 days; vaults every month. I (AVP--operations) set up the schedules so that they are done on a random basis, and the teller supervisors or operations managers at the branches actually complete the audits. They return them to me, and I reconcile them to the GL.

Simbanker makes a good point. If you don't reconcile the audit back to the G/L, it was pointless. It is very easy for a teller to run a quick cash out on their teller machine to force themselves to balance for an audit. (Why do we always find these things out the hard way-$$?)