PROBLEMS OF THE HAULIER AND CARRIER.
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Further Considerations of Records for Small Bus Companies.
IN the first instalment, published in the issue of The eommereial Motor for November 2nd, of the articles on the problem of devising accurate book-keeping for small bus companies, I dealt with the various points which have to be recorded when keeping the accounts of a small bus company, so far as outgoings are concerned. It will be remembered that a weekly financial summary was suggested, in order that the proprietor or manager might be in a position to keep a cheek on the state of affairs every seven days. If matters be left longer than a week, leakages and discrepancies are much more difficult to trace, and for this reason a frequent review of the position by the responsible official was recommended.
• Up to the point reached last week we were able to complete the summary, so far as expenses were concerned, in respect of each vehicle of the fleet, but we have not yet discussed any method of checking the receipts so that they can be used to offset the expenditure and to enable a balance to be struck quickly either on the profit or loss side.
Generally speaking, the income will be of two kinds ; first, by cheque or cash in settlement of private-hire work when one or more of the buses are used for conveying people by previous arrangement. The second type of receipt is the more common one and comprises the money taken by the conductors or drivers of the buses and handed over to the cashier or clerk in the office at the end of each day's work, or at other stated times. So far as the first class of receipt is concerned, this is an ordinary entry in the cash book, with subsequent postings to the ledgers, and it calls for no special comment.
The Conductor's Record of His Daily Takings.
Turning now to the daily receipts from the conductors, this needs a simple system, and we must consider the question of waybills. Every morning a certain number of tickets is issued to each conductor, comprising, say, six denominations to cover the various fare stages on the route with which he has to deal. In order to protect the interests of both proprietor and conductor, some method of checking must be instituted to see that when the day's work is done the correct sum of money is handed over to the office and the conductor is relieved of further responsibility for the takings.
In the accompanying diagram is shown a simple form of waybill which is the most popular safeguard for the owners and conductors, furnishing, as it does, a complete record of the trips so far as the issue of tickets is concerned. It will be seen that the top of the form . contains details as to the date, route, number of the
• SUS and the conductor's number. In the next section the clerk fills in the numbers of the first and last tickets which he issues in each denomination and puts the cash value of each type below. The first and last tickets of each bundle are noted in the appropriate column, so that calculations at the •end of the day are quite straightforward and can be carried out quickly without calling for delay on the part of the conductor who is about to finish and wants to get home.
On the road the middle part of the waybill has to be filled in at the beginning of each journey by the conductor entering up the first number of ticket of each type to be available for issue when he leaves the terminal point. For instance, at 11 am.' on the specimen the first twopenny ticket in hand is Cl. 5472. The next journey he makes a similar entry, and so on until the end of the clay, when he puts down the first numbers of the tickets returned to the office.. It then remains to :..alculate how many tickets of each type have been c42 1 returned by subtracting the first number of each class of ticket returned from the last ticket number issued to the conductor and making a note of the result.
In the next horizontal column is entered the total value of the tickets of each kind handed in, and below, again, the value of the tickets which have been used. By adding together the six totals of the values of the used tickets, the sum which must be handed in to the office is arrived at and the difference between this figure and the value of the issue for the day should be equal to the value of the tickets returned. This serves as a most useful and strictly accurate check on the calculations.
This waybill is, of course, no proof of the honesty of the conductor, in that he may reissue a ticket already used. The waybill is not intended to prevent this type of thing and the services of inspectors must be used to cope with the evil if thought necessary. The waybill does, however, provide a fairly simple tally on the tickets, and by filing the waybill of each bus nightly in its proper pigeon-hole all that has to be done when preparing the credit side of the weekly summary is to take up the seven waybills, add up the total Money received, and the result, together with any income that the bus may have earned on private-hire work, can be noted on the summary form as thq total weekly income; this is set against the total weekly expenditure, which was calculated by the method described in the first article of this series. S.T.R.