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JOSEPH F. BOUGHAN Certified Public Accountant Five Kurland Avenue Brockton, Massachusetts 02401 617 � 586-0612 Accounting Department Function — To maintain records for the purpose of reporting to the select— men on the current financial status of the activities of the town and to provide a control over receipts and disbursements and to account for changes in various assets of the town. Records Maintained — Cash receipts book, general journal, and general ledger. There is considerable duplication of effort in maintaining these records which I believe contributes to the fact that monthly reports are frequently received by the selectmen two or three months after the due date. The cash receipts book is almost an exact duplicate of the treasurer's cash receipts book and could be eliminated by using the treasurerrs cash report as a record for posting to the general. ledger and keeping these reports in a binder as support for postings made. The Bureau of Accounts specifically allows this procedure in their publication, "Functions of General Ledger Accounts for Uniform Municipal Accounting Systeme. The Town accountant has a copy of 'this publication. The postings to the account, "Estimated receipts", in the general ledger are numerous and could be combined into a single posting for each week of the year, thereby, eliminating from 500 to 600 postings to the ledger each year. There is no necessity or requirement that each item comprising estimated receipts be posted to the ledger as a separate item. Good accounting pro— cedures provide for the grouping of similarly classified items in order to reduce the workload and reduce the probability of posting errors. The Town accountant currently prepares a handwritten warrant each week for the payment of payrolls. This manual operation should be eliminated and the