OFFICE WORK OF A GARRISON BATTERY. 
487 
transfers £1 8 8.” All entries should be verified whenever possible by the 
signature of the recipient; this rule holding good for entries on the receipt 
side as on that for payments. There ought to be no question as to what 
officer received any money. 
5. Each item should be, as far as possible, kept separate, so as to make 
checking easier. This rule may appear broken in the entry of payment on 
8th January, and it would have been better if the receipt of Gunner Maher's 
debt could have appeared on the receipt side; but if that had been done, 
the payment to the 22nd Brigade would have appeared as £1 9 0, whereas 
the cheque sent was only £L 3 8, and this might have caused confusion if 
the item had been referred to. As it now stands, the amount paid by the 
cash book and by the cheque book agree. Nothing can be better than to 
keep always in your mind <e How would this look to an utter stranger 
investigating the accounts three years hence ?" 
6. It ought not to be necessary, but I fear it is, to say that no cash 
account can be shown as in debt. As it represents all the sums paid and 
received, the Major cannot have paid more than he got. If any advance has 
had to be made by the Major, or by any fund, to keep the battery going, it 
must appear as a receipt. 
7. The weekly pay is managed as follows :—The Nos. 1 having prepared 
their pay books, and entered in the pay sheet for the week the name of every 
man of their subdivisions, the Pay-Serjeant takes the battery ledger, his 
assistant the pay books, one by one. The assistant reads out the men's names, 
the Pay-Serjeant judges quickly from the state of the man's sheet how much 
pay ought to go to him that pay day—say, for example, five shillings; the 
assistant enters that sum in the pay book, the Pay-Serjeant in the ledger, 
in the columns at the left hand upper side for cash payments; and so on. 
Of course at the end of the month the amounts have to be more carefully taken 
from the ledger, so as to make the accounts balance. The totals of the pay 
books and the washing bills give the amount required for the whole battery; 
this is brought from the bank by an officer, and the proper sum placed on 
each pay book. The Nos. I are now called in, each counts his cash, and, if 
it be correct, goes up to the Major, signs the cash book (see entry for 
7th January), and then proceeds to pay his men, in the presence of an officer, 
one room being used for that purpose. Thus in half-an-hour a large amount 
will have been paid, and its payment verified by the signature of the men 
in the pay books. A small percentage of the men may not have been paid, 
but very little money will be left in the hands of the N.C. officer. Some¬ 
times, to avoid corrections or returns of pay issued for men gone sick, &c., 
it may save trouble to not let the Nos. 1 sign till the pay is altogether, or 
nearly altogether, issued; but the principle remains the same. A N.C. officer 
has no means of keeping any money in security in barracks. By this system 
he, at the utmost, can only have about two men's pay to keep for an hour or 
two after leaving the pay-room. The officer'superintending the actual pay¬ 
ment does not allow any N.C. officer to leave with a large amount of cash. 
It has to be returned; and an example of this return of pay issued, and of its 
subsequent re-issue,, will be found in App. A., under dates of 7th and 
