Overview: Many Councils do not operate a petty cash. Where they do it is usually of low value. Our concern here is that cash has not been misappropriated, or items of expenditure put through petty cash which have not been subject to review or approval by Council. Unless the volume or value of transactions through the petty cash is high, you should not spend an undue amount of time on this.

1.The Financial Regulations will state a value of petty cash and the amount held should not exceed this.

5. Petty cash payments should normally be for a low value, for such items as stamps, office milk etc. You should not expect to see payments of any significant value. If there are any, we should query this.

9. Petty cash expenditure should be regular reported to council. This is usually done when a claim is made to refund or ‘top up’ the petty cash. What we want to avoid is spending happening through petty cash and not being recorded in the Councils accounts. We would expect, at a minimum, one claim to be made every year, unless the Council has deliberate decided, and Minuted, a decision to stop using petty cash,