Auditing the Branch Duty Roster
A DCCB branch has four clerical staff - Priya, Qadir, Ramesh and Sushma - who must cover three desks daily, Monday to Friday: Cash, Clearing and Accounts. One person is free each day. The branch rules are: (a) nobody may sit on the same desk on two consecutive days; (b) Ramesh is not trained for Clearing and cannot be posted there; (c) Sushma must cover Accounts on Wednesday, the day the branch officer attends the district meeting; (d) Priya is on sanctioned leave on Friday. The head cashier submits this roster. Monday - Cash Priya, Clearing Qadir, Accounts Ramesh, Sushma free. Tuesday - Cash Qadir, Clearing Priya, Accounts Sushma, Ramesh free. Wednesday - Cash Ramesh, Clearing Qadir, Accounts Sushma, Priya free. Thursday - Cash Priya, Clearing Sushma, Accounts Qadir, Ramesh free. Friday - Cash Sushma, Clearing Qadir, Accounts Ramesh, Priya on leave.
1. Audit the submitted roster against the four branch rules. Identify every violation and produce the smallest correction that keeps all rules intact.
Read the worked answer
Check rule by rule.
- Rule (b), Ramesh never on Clearing: Ramesh is on Accounts (Mon), Cash (Wed) and Accounts (Fri). Satisfied.
- Rule (c), Sushma on Accounts on Wednesday: satisfied.
- Rule (d), Priya absent on Friday: satisfied.
- Rule (a), no repeated desk on consecutive days:
- Priya: Cash Mon, Clearing Tue, -, Cash Thu - fine.
- Qadir: Clearing Mon, Cash Tue, Clearing Wed, Accounts Thu, Clearing Fri - no repetition on adjacent days.
- Ramesh: Accounts Mon, free Tue, Cash Wed, free Thu, Accounts Fri - Mon and Fri are not consecutive, fine.
- Sushma: free Mon, Accounts Tue, Accounts Wed - violation.
So there is exactly one breach: Sushma holds Accounts on both Tuesday and Wednesday.
Smallest fix. Wednesday cannot change for Sushma, because rule (c) pins her to Accounts that day. The correction must therefore be made on Tuesday: put Sushma on Cash and Qadir on Accounts, leaving Ramesh free.
Revised Tuesday - Cash Sushma, Clearing Priya, Accounts Qadir, Ramesh free.
Re-verify: Cash runs Priya, Sushma, Ramesh, Priya, Sushma - no repeat on adjacent days. Qadir is Clearing Mon, Accounts Tue, Clearing Wed - fine. Priya is Clearing Tue and Cash Mon/Thu - fine. Ramesh is never on Clearing. All four rules hold with a single day's change, which is the minimum possible given that Wednesday is fixed.
2. On Friday, Qadir must attend a recovery camp in a village and Priya is already on leave. The manager proposes that Ramesh handle both Cash and Clearing on that day. Evaluate this proposal from a control point of view and state what the branch should do instead.
Read the worked answer
The proposal should be refused, even though it looks like a one-day convenience.
Why it is a control failure, not a staffing adjustment:
- Cash and Clearing are the branch's two value-moving functions. One person receiving cash and also passing clearing entries can both create and conceal a difference - the classic loss of segregation of duties and of maker–checker separation.
- Clearing entries generate credits that can be routed to a friendly account; if the same clerk controls cash, the day's book can be balanced on paper while the value has already left.
- The exposure is worst precisely on the appointed day, because the branch officer is not always at the counter and the day's reporting is compressed.
- Vouchers signed twice by the same clerk in two different functions are an automatic audit observation; the branch would be explaining it for years.
Workable alternatives, in order of preference:
- Request the controlling office or the nearest branch for one relieving clerk for the day - the standard route, and the camp is known in advance, so it is not an emergency.
- Re-sequence the camp visit to a day when the branch is fully staffed.
- If neither is possible, restrict clearing for that day to unavoidable items, have the branch officer personally authorise every clearing entry with a second signature, and record the arrangement in the day book with the reason.
Whatever is chosen, the reason must be minuted. A blank "handled by Ramesh" entry is worse than the shortage itself.
3. The head cashier complains that the rotation rule (a) makes rostering impossible and asks that it be dropped. Which rule should the branch actually address first, and what is the reasoning?
Read the worked answer
Rule (a) is the last one to relax. Rotation is the branch's cheapest fraud control: when the same clerk sits on Cash for weeks, that clerk and a given set of customers, agents and cheque-drops become a stable, predictable pair, and manipulation becomes both easier and harder to spot. Rotation forces every desk to be handed over and tallied, which is exactly when differences surface.
Rank the constraints by what they actually cost the branch:
- Rule (b) - Ramesh untrained for Clearing - is a competence gap, and a gap can be closed. One structured training-plus-shadowing week under Qadir removes the constraint permanently and gives the branch a genuinely flexible roster. This is the cheapest fix and should be done first.
- Rule (c) - Sushma on Accounts on Wednesday - is a one-day, one-desk pin; it constrains only Wednesday and is easily scheduled around.
- Rule (d) - Priya's Friday leave - is planned absence, visible weeks in advance and covered by relief staff.
- Rule (a) is the only control on the list. The difficulty the head cashier is describing is a footprint of an untrained clerk and an inflexible Wednesday, not of rotation.
Conclusion: train Ramesh first, plan Wednesday around the pin, and keep rotation. A roster that is easy to write but lets one clerk hold a desk indefinitely has traded a real risk for a clerical convenience - and the audit finding will arrive in the branch's inbox, not the head cashier's.