Managing petty cash

Max Dana Updated by Max Dana

What is petty cash?

Petty cash is considered all cash that is withdrawn from the bank account and all expenses paid for using that cash. While it is possible to treat all cash on hand (e.g. cash received at a box office, for concessions, etc.) as a "bank" and pay expenses out of it, we find it much cleaner to separate these types of cash. Use your petty cash for cash expenses, and deposit any other cash receipts into the bank soon after you receive them.

Reporting petty cash

The Finance > Banking folder in your ArtsPool Google Drive folder contains a Google Sheet for reporting petty cash expenses. Each fiscal year has a separate file called [COMPANY] - Petty Cash Reports FYXX, where XX represents the fiscal year number.

When you withdraw cash, start a new tab on the current fiscal year's Petty Cash Reports worksheet by duplicating the tab called Example (to duplicate) and renaming it with the date of the withdrawal. Right-clicking the tab will give you the option to duplicate or rename it.

  1. Enter the date and amount of the withdrawal at the top of the new tab.
  2. Enter the date, account code, program and any notes for cash purchases in the Petty Cash Report as soon as possible after the purchase.
  3. Scan or take a photo of each receipt and keep them organized for submission later. Whenever possible, give each file a meaningful name like [vendor]-[date].pdf.

​When you have spent down all of the petty cash from the withdrawal, create a new task in the ArtsPool app, including a PDF or a link to the deposit report to along with scans or photos of the checks and deposit slip as backup. Please give your task a meaningful title such as​ Petty Cash Report - [withdrawal date] - [withdrawal amount]. Select bookkeeping as the Category for this task when submitting it via the online web form.

Don't forget to submit the cash withdrawal receipt! We like to keep those too.

How did we do?

How to submit receipts to ArtsPool

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