How often do your tellers get counted?

once a month at washington mutual, once a month at current bank

3 times a year

Twice a year, and they are picked at random

Once every 3-4 weeks.

If you don't do it once a month why bother. Its to prevent Tellers from stealing from you, and certifying "Cash" is correct. Once every 3 months or twice a year is shuting the barn door after the horse is out.

I have yet to see a theft by a teller other than a person who was thought to be totally honest. So just because it hasn't happened is no reason to slack off on the audit. Its to primarily "PREVENT" and verify accurate financial reporting and not necessarily to detect.

Surprise counts once a month by Branch Manager or Supervisor. Annualy by Audit Department on a surprise basis.

Don,

Are you saying that monthly surprise cash counts prevent teller theft because the tellers will be less likely to steal if they know they will be surprised with a cash count approximately monthly?

Or are you saying that teller thefts will be prevented from getting too large by catching a teller who steals a little at a time before all those little thefts add up to a larger figure?

Or are you saying something else?

Our outside audit consultants feel this is a low risk area. So what if someone takes $100? They get fired and the bank is out $100. (And usually they try to force balance and don't know how and it ends up showing up immediately.) Audit should concentrate on the high $, high risk areas such as wire transfer, securities, loans. Fraud in these areas could really negatively impact the bank. Of course, if you have a shop with a lot of personnel you can afford to count cash more often but most smaller banks have only one or two in the audit department.

We audit once per year; operations audits once per quarter.
Our cash vaults are counted daily under dual control by operations as the potential loss is higher in vaults than in teller windows.

I do not count teller cash, but twice a month the branch manager and head teller do surprise teller drawer audits. This process did catch one instance of petty theft this year. I review their audit logs, to make sure they are performing the surprise cash counts.