The $200 Overage at 5:40 p.m.
At 5:40 p.m. on a Friday, teller Dana closes her drawer and finds it $200 over. Her day included a $1,000 cash deposit from a contractor who counted out what he said were ten $100 bills; a $340 cash-back withdrawal; and a $2,000 currency order delivered from the vault at 11:00 a.m. in two strapped $1,000 bundles. She also ran the coin sorter for a customer who brought in $86.40 in loose change and received $86.00 back, because the machine rounds down to the nearest dollar. Dana's supervisor has already left for the day, the vault is closed, a customer is waiting at the drive-through, and the branch closes at 6:00. Dana is due at a second job at 6:30. The balancing screen is open on her terminal and the force-balance function is one keystroke away. Her drawer count sheet lists expected cash of $8,460 and an actual count of $8,660.
1. What should Dana do in the next twenty minutes, and what must she not do?
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Do: stop and recount before touching the balancing screen. A recount means emptying the tray, counting each denomination twice, and recording counts on the count sheet. Then compare the actual denomination breakdown to the system's expected breakdown, not just the total - a $200 difference concentrated in $100s points to a different cause than a difference spread across $20s.
Notify: call the supervisor before leaving. Most banks require immediate notification of any overage above a small tolerance (often $10–$25); $200 is well past that. The supervisor's absence does not transfer the decision to Dana.
Escalate: ask the supervisor to authorize dual control with the vault custodian or the closing officer so the drawer is sealed and witnessed, even if the vault itself is closed.
Must not: use the force-balance function. It creates a false proof, destroys the evidence trail, and is treated as falsification in most internal-control policies. She must not pull the $200 out and hold it in a personal envelope, apply it to another teller's shortage, or carry the difference into tomorrow. She must not discuss the shortage with the drive-through customer beyond a brief apology and an offer to route them to another window.
2. Rank the likely causes of a $200 overage given the day's transactions, and describe how Dana would test each one.
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1. The contractor deposit was keyed short (most likely). If he actually handed over twelve $100 bills and Dana keyed $1,000, the drawer is $200 over and the customer's account is $200 short. Test: pull the deposit ticket and the customer's copy, recount the strap, and review the transaction on camera if the branch retains that day's footage. A $200 overage that exactly matches a single deposit is the cleanest explanation.
2. The vault order was short-keyed. Two straps of $1,000 could have been strapped with eleven bills each or signed for incorrectly. Test: re-count the remaining vault bundle against the currency order slip and the vault custodian's signature.
3. A payout error. Two bills stuck together during a withdrawal, so the customer received fewer bills than the system recorded. Test: check the day's cash-out transactions for round amounts and compare to the denomination breakdown of the overage.
4. The coin sorter is not a cause. The $86.40 → $86.00 rounding retains 40 cents in the machine's settlement, not in the drawer; it cannot produce a $200 cash difference. It is a separate disclosure question: the rounding rule must match the bank's published coin policy.
3. If the overage traces to the contractor, what must happen - and what happens to the $200 if it is never traced?
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If the deposit ticket, the strap recount, or the camera review shows the contractor handed over $1,200 and $1,000 was keyed, the bank owes him a $200 credit. Dana documents the finding, the supervisor or manager approves an account adjustment, and the credit is posted to his account - not paid out of the drawer as cash. The correction is logged on the teller's offage/overage record with the cause, and the customer is contacted proactively with a plain explanation (“your deposit was posted short; we've corrected it”). Proactive contact matters: if he discovers the shortage himself, the bank is defending a complaint instead of fixing an error.
If the overage is never traced within the bank's research window (commonly five business days), it is booked to a general-ledger overage/suspense account under dual control with documentation of the research performed. It is never paid to the teller, never left in the drawer, and never used to offset another teller's shortage. A teller with a repeated pattern of large overages - even in the bank's favor - should expect coaching review, because unexplained overages are as much an internal-control signal as shortages.