Cashier's Check Supply

I am wondering how other bank's handle the teller supply of cashier's checks and money orders. Currently we have a working supply of both money orders and cashier's checks behind the teller line available to all tellers. When cashiers checks are taken out for issue the teller logs the date, number of the check and initials. An end of day verification is done linking the last used number to the next avaialble number in the supply. They do not verify every check nuumber in the unused supply. If someone took a check out of the middle of the supply and used it for fraudulent reasons, it would not be discovered until a later date. Is this a reasonable way to handle this or does anyone have suggestions for a better way.

This is what we do also. The only other thing to do would be to check the entire supply at the end of each day. I guess the question you need to ask is the risk of a loss of a check worth the time and effort for someone to verify each check. If you reconcile the statement at least weekly that is another control that you have in place.

Our main office send packages to each branch when needed and these packages are recorded on a branch log. When individual tellers need additional CC or MOs the vault teller disperses 10 CCs and/or 10 MOs to each teller who logs the 10 CC and MO numbers on individual logs, and completes the rest of the information (i.e. date of sale, dollar amount, etc.) upon the sale of the item.

The process does not take that much time and we believe it does provide adequate control of these items.

If your money orders and cashiers checks are drawn on your bank, does your reconcilement process have fraud procedures for checks cashed out of sequence?

With the availability of the technology in today's environment, why a Bank would not go to blank stock and just print the checks as they go is beyond me. Most teller platforms already support this function. Sure beats all this inventory control.

I am glad you said that, Randy. I have been thinking that same thing. It is truly more efficient, and eliminates all of these issues. I have seen banks whose platform had this capability yet they hadn't considered it.

I totally agree. I was horrified to find out that our core service provider does not support this function.

Randy - I agree, however the key is word in your statement is the word "most" and unfortunately the teller platform at my bank does not support this function so therefore we need to do adequate inventory control. Hopefully some day, we will not have to worry about doing all of this inventory control.

I have found that the two banks that I've worked for have used a laser printer but still have held on to some of the old checks incase the system goes down or printer fails. My recommendation to them was to bundle the checks in sets of 10, seal each bundle in an envelope and write what they were and the serial numbers on the outside, seal the envelope and have two people sign the seal. That way you know there can't be a check taken out of the middle.