Receiving Teller

A bank teller is a senior clerk who deals with the bank's customers - chiefly depositors - in daily transactions across his counter. In very small banks one man will act both as receiving teller and paying teller, as well as note teller and collection teller; he is the Teller, and he may be an official as well. In many large banks, particularly in the west, an arbitrary alphabetical division is made of the accounts of the bank and each group is treated as a separate unit. Under this plan, it is as if there were several small banks operating under one roof. Each teller acts as both paying and receiving teller for his own group, to which bookkeepers are also assigned. This plan has several advantages. The depositors are not often held up in a single long line on busy days; the teller is not put to the strain of knowing the faces and signatures of all the depositors; the money can be handled more easily and if differences should occur they are confined within limits.

But, as has been stated, the duty goes with the office rather than with the man, and whether the bank employs a separate receiving teller or not, there are certain duties and responsibilities peculiar to the position. Therefore, in this chapter, as in those following, we will assume, for convenience of illustration, that a separate employee is assigned to each of the desks or departments thus described.

The principal business of the receiving teller is to receive deposits. Responsibility of no mean order rests upon the teller, because he acts as the agent of the bank in the relation established between the depositor and the institution. He must be on his guard at all times. His first care is to assure himself that the deposit is intended for his bank. Many people have two or more bank accounts and sometimes confuse the pass-books. The amount of the deposit is entered in the pass-book as a receipt. In a savings bank the pass-book is more than a receipt: it is a voucher or evidence of contract between the bank and the depositor.

If the bank is one that deals with a large number of depositors who make deposits of any size or quantity of checks, the teller will merely satisfy himself that the checks are endorsed by the bank's customer, enter the amount in the pass-book and examine or prove the ticket later. This prevents a long line of depositors from becoming impatient of delay. If errors are found they are reported by telephone, and since the bank will have been careful in the first place as to whom it accepts as depositors, there is but slight risk that an error may not be satisfactorily adjusted at the end of the day, without loss to the bank. But whether it is done first or last, by the teller himself or by his assistants, each deposit is subjected to the same process of proving. The cash is counted and care taken that there are no counterfeit bills or coins included. The checks are examined to see that they are properly listed and endorsed. In cities where the banks charge their customers exchange on out-of-town checks, the receiving teller sees to it that the proper amount of exchange is deducted. As for checks on his own bank that may be deposited, the receiving teller is governed by the same rules that apply to the paying teller, that is, he must know the signature and also be certain that the check is "good," etc. Finally, he proves or tests the addition of the ticket. The total is listed on his blotter or scratcher and the ticket is then given to the bookkeeper.

The various items that make up the deposit are then ready for distribution. The checks on the bank itself go to the bookkeepers; checks on other banks in the same town go either to the clerks making up the exchanges for the clearing house or to the runners' or messengers' department for presentation. Out-of-town checks go to the "transit department," where they are assorted as to place payable and forwarded for collection and returns. If the bank is small, the receiving teller may handle all these various checks in his own department, but ordinarily they will be distributed to other departments which are really subdivisions of the receiving teller's department. The most important of these departments in point of size and responsibility is the transit department.

We will describe such a department in a city bank. It so happens that out-of-town, or "country checks," can be handled and collected more economically in quantities, hence country banks and many city trust and savings institutions send these items to a city commercial bank which may make a specialty of collecting them. The receiving teller, theoretically at least, will receive these items through the mail, although when so deposited they actually do not leave the hands of the transit clerks who open and prove the incoming remittances or deposits. The teller adds the figures of the mail deposits to those of counter or "window" deposits. The transit clerks assort the checks geographically, placing together checks that are payable in the same part of the state or country. They are then endorsed with the bank's stamp and listed on letters addressed to the bank's correspondents. At the end of the day the totals of the outgoing letters must equal the total of the checks which are charged to the transit department by the receiving teller. The bookkeeper charges the total of each individual outgoing letter to the bank to whom sent, and the grand total increases the general ledger item "due from banks" by that amount.

The receiving teller's settlement is quite simple. He begins the day without any funds. As deposits come in he lists them, as to totals on a scratcher, writing the name of the depositor opposite the amount. At the end of the day the totals of the checks he has received and charged to the different departments of the bank according to place of payment, plus the cash he holds, must equal the total deposits for that day. Settlement being made, he then turns his cash over to the paying teller, who usually does not count it until the next morning. In many banks the receiving teller acts as the "clearing house" for the other departments. For instance, checks on other institutions will be cashed by the paying teller, or given to the note teller in payment of notes, or paid to the loan clerk for loans, or the bank's draft on another city may be bought with a personal check. All these departments may give over such receipts to the receiving teller who adds the totals to his individual deposits in making his settlement. Charge and credit tickets would be handled similarly. The student should keep it clear that such work is incidental to the business, and it does not follow that because it may be the note teller, paying teller or some other clerk who does this internal accounting for various kinds of receipts, that his bank is "different."

The general adoption of the "batch" or "block" system has been a boon to the accounting done by the receiving teller, and this plan is now in operation in all modern banks. Under this system the correctness of the deposit ticket is not tested as to listing or addition when received. Instead, the ticket is handed to an assistant, who assorts the items in groups, for example, self-checks, clearing house checks, non-clearing local checks, out-of-town checks and money. Further division may be made of any of these groups if the size of the bank warrants. The items are then listed on an adding machine in parallel columns, each of which is headed by the name of the department which will receive the checks. The totals are then "picked up" or recapitulated, and must agree with the total of the ticket which is listed in another column on the sheet and the name of the depositor added opposite. If the deposits are small, several are combined on one sheet. At the end of the day a total is made of each column on all the sheets, or "blocks," and these being recapitulated must equal the total deposits which is the teller's proof. The advantages of this plan are many. No effort or time is lost in the original proof of the ticket. As the items are listed in separate columns, a total is arrived at which not only proves the ticket, but gives separate totals which other departments use to prove their own work against. If differences occur, they are segregated into groups and thus can be more easily located.