Letters received without proper instructions concerning the enclosures are investigated. If it is impossible to ascertain the disposition to be made of them, the remitter is immediately notified by letter, or by telegram in case of large remittances. The money is credited to the Cashier account until complete in structions are received.
Paid and canceled vouchers returned for missing, wrong, or forged indorsements, are received by mail and over the counter. These vouchers are sent to the last indorser with the request that he correct or supply the indorsement. In the case of a forgery, an affidavit accompanies the voucher and a refund of the amount involved is demanded.
Bookkeeping and Proofs The credit journal of the note, or third, teller classifies its credits in some such way as follows, the alphabetical groupings coinciding with the check desk bookkeepers' and foreign book keepers' classification: General bookkeeper.
Personal: A-H, I-N, 0-Z.
Impersonal: A-B, C-D, E-11, I-M, N-P, Q-S, T-Z. National banks: A-C, D-H, I-M, N-R, S-Z. State banks: A-H, I-N, O-Z.
Trust companies and savings banks.
Foreign: A-C, D-L, M-N, O-R, S-Z.
The bank's accounts: foreign, domestic.
All credits are prepared on credit tickets as the items are received and are sent and credited according to their tenor.
The third teller's department proof would take a form some what as that shown in Figure 2r.
The charges to the transit department include the large country checks; the charges to the check desk department are the checks received drawn on the bank itself; the charges to the first teller are for currency remittances and for the till cash; those to the second teller are for the exchange charges paid to the note teller; those to the fourth teller arc for special instructions items, etc.; and those to the fifth teller are for large sights, trust com pany checks, small sights, and small country checks held over night. The clearing house items, after sorting, arc charged to the mail department. The credits from the first, second, fourth, and fifth tellers are rare and odd items.
Functions of the City Collection Department The city collection department corresponds closely with the transit department. It handles much the same kinds of items and performs the same functions, but its collection area is limited to the city. Moreover, since a big proportion of city cash items is collected through the clearing house by the mail teller, the greater part of the cash items handled by the city collection department, or fifth teller are sight drafts of large amount or on non-clearing institutions.
The collection area covered by the department is determined by the size of the city and the convenience of the bank. The
whole of a moderate-sized city can be conveniently reached by messengers directly from the bank, but in a very large city a down-town bank considers up-town institutions as out of town and handles its collections in the up-town distant boroughs through its transit and country collection departments. Certain of the up-town banks are regular correspondents and handle the collections of the down-town bank. An item on an up-town institution may be large enough to warrant the down-town bank to collect it directly by special messenger in order to get the funds as soon as possible. The New York Clearing House recently established a city collection department for the purpose of collect ing for member banks sight drafts drawn on selected concerns numbering 82 in all and including several East-side banks and bankers.
The messengers' department is an essential part of the city collection department. The messengers are divided into groups according to the class of items carried for collection—cash, special collections, coupons, notes, discounts, etc. The members of each group arc assigned to routes into which the collection area is mapped; the routes of the "cash" area do not conform to the routes of the "special collections" area, etc. It is unusual in large metropolitan banks for a messenger to carry more than one class of items. The routes arc arranged for convenience and, al though geographical, one covers the cotton institutions, another the produce institutions, another the insurance companies, etc.
The city collection department is genetically derived from the note teller's department, and in smaller institutions its functions arc performed by the note teller. Like the note teller's depart ment, much detail is involved in its work. The internal or ganization of the department divides on the basis of the items handled; when any class of items attains to large volume, it is delegated to a specialized section. For convenience of treatment let it be assumed that the department's functions are grouped for the handling of: i. Special collections 2. Sight drafts 3. Returns 4. Clearing house returns S. Special deposits The department would then be organized as follows: The city collection teller and his assistant would have general super vision of the department and the messengers. A special collec tion clerk, a sight draft clerk, a redemption clerk, a returns clerk, a cash clerk, and a special deposits clerk would have charge of their respective sections, and a bookkeeper would keep the credit journal. The city collection window would open into the cash section, and the redemption window into the returns section.