Currently, our night drop is opened in the morning by the first teller who gets there. No one else is there and there is no camera present. Then when the person responsible for recording the night deposits comes in, they take all the deposits out and take them to their desk to record the contents. Then the deposits are taken to the teller line for the transactions to be completed. How do others complete this process? What are the weaknesses in our current process?

We do that also, and it kills me!!!!!

At my last institution, the safe code on the night drop was actually split....the sup's had the first two numbers, and regular staff had the last two, thus always needed two to open the safe, and then those two had to opena nd record the contents together, immediately.

Uh-oh that sounds like a recipe for disaster. Single control over the opening and recording of contents from the night deposit is a big no-no. How can the Bank prove otherwise if customers claim that whole bags go missing?

I would open the night deposit and record its contents under dual control. Here, teller supervisors are in possession of the key and operations officers hold the combination. They open the night drop and sign off as such, then two tellers record the bags on a log sheet and sign off as such.

Optimally, the contents of the invidual bags should be recorded under dual control also. I would like that here, but we do have compensating controls in place so I am okay with that.

I totally agree with AuditGuy. Dual control all the way. I've been in banking a loonnnng time, and that's how I've always seen it handled. I've seen several cases where the business customer disputed the amount or the presence of a bag. Being able to prove that the bank exercised proper dual control when opening the vault and processing deposits nipped the dispute "right in the bud". (In every case, the customer eventually found it was employee theft on their end.) So definitely exercise proper dual control AND document it.

We require two people to be present at the opening of the night drop vault (they like to call it dual control because two people sign on a log) but they don't have true dual control because one can open with out another present. However, they do have cameras to mitigate the situation.

We also require two people to count the contents once the bags are distributed.

Similar to other posts - dual physical control on night deposit drop box (combo & key - ops mgr & teller);

Contents of deposits are logged and verified (initialed) by both people;

Then teller takes bags to teller counter and another teller deposits into respective account and actual deposit is logged and verified (initialed) once again by the two tellers;

The key is two people in observation of contents at all times.