The new bank that I am working for is discouraging (and may ban) tellers from doing a trial balance during the day. Tellers like to do this to see if they are in balance throughout the day prior to balancing - to allow time to look for errors if needed. The Bank claims their auditors (whoever they are - have never seen or heard from anyone!)r) say this is an indicator that the teller is doing something wrong. Therefore the Bank doesn't want it done. Any thoughts on this, pro or con? I have never heard of such a thing!

As an auditor, I've never heard of this either. And as a prior teller - I liked using it. If I did a trial balance at noon and everything balanced but then at 3pm I was off, it helped me to know that I should look at those transactions in that 3 hour window.

Why wouldn't you want your tellers to find their own mistake before the work runs? I think by finding and correcting your own mistakes you are less likely to do that same thing again. You learn from it.

I've been at a bank that banned trial balances throughout the day. It was wasted work time. I had tellers that balanced when they came it, balanced after they ran the night-drop, balanced before they left for lunch, balanced after they came back, balanced at 2:00, balanced again at 3:00 when they went on "next-day", and then balanced again before they left. It was crazy! They were hardly ever off, and if they were it was rarely over $1. We had customers who had to wait in line because I always seemed to have one teller on the front line balancing.

The only time we allowed them to balance was at 3:00 when they closed out the day. They whined for the first week. But after that, it was a non-issue. And like I said, they were seldom off.

A good teller should not have to balance more than once a day, IMHO.

In my previous experience when I was a teller if a particular teller was having an ongoing balancing problem they were encouraged if not required to balance before lunch, around 3:30 and at the end of the day.

We do not balance daily.... It used to be required to balance once a day, now it is required once a week. If you choose to balance daily, you must only balance once and it must be at the end of your shift. Counting more than once during the day allows a teller to "force balance" their drawer and it is frowned upon where I work.

I can't begin to think I would only have to balance only weekly or if I was the person in charge of balancing the cash, I would have to clear up the problems when the cash didn't balance.
We have the tellers balance at the end of the days business and the tellers who work the drive-in after hours do a trial balance, then the next day they complete a final balance.

I don't see the problem with it. As a current teller, I like to at least keep my drawer updated after every few transactions (or at least every hour). I find that if I happen to make a mistake on a transaction, it is a whole lot easier to find it then and there, other than trying to find it right before we have to move to the next business day.

Multiple balancing is a waste of time and effort that could be spent waiting on customers, which is the primary responsibility of a teller.

I believe that trial balancing should be used as a training tool for new tellers or tellers who have been counseled for not balancing and are heading for more formal disciplinary action. The trial balancing should be a scheduled by the teller manager in order to maintain service levels on the teller line. A good teller can review their work, prior to any cut-off times and catch errors without having to do an actual trial balance.

As a former teller turned auditor I am heavily in favor of trial balancing. From my own experience I would only balance when it was slow and no customers were around. Rather than banning trial balancing I would suggest requiring any teller to immediately stop the balance if a customer approaches...no matter how close you are to finishing. As for the point about force balancing...yes it creates an issue where tellers are more likely to do what it takes to make sure they balance once they know they are out...however I would hope you are only hiring teller staff with decent enough morals that would discourage this activity, or at least emphasize the point that it is potentional internal fraud and a fireable offense.

I am in favor or trail balancing for tellers "when time permits" It saves time and is more efficient than having tellers go through their entire day at the end of the day. It has also decreased outages. Which in my eyes would be good because mistakes can effect customers, which is not good customer service. As I stated (when time permits) Good luck. PS as an auditor I don't see anything wrong with this either. Unless they are adding and taking out money to make themselves balance. That is BIG no no. Good Luck

The same as others...our tellers trial balance if it is slow and they cease the trial if a customer walks into the lobby. We do however, require a teller to trial at lunch and before going home if they are on "probation" for not adhering to the balancing policy (which means they have been off a large amount or several amounts in the last 30 days). It does help them to pinpoint a time when an error may have occurred and the memory of transactions are fresher if it is a shorter span of time that they have to recollect.

I'm new to the balancing at 3:00 and then going on to the "next-day". Is this a fairly common practice? My past experience has been that at end of day you balance out. Aren't there control concerns with not balancing at the true end-of-day and leaving work in the drawer overnight and/or weekend?