Petty Cash Voucher

A petty cash voucher records a small payment or reimbursement from a cash fund, usually showing the date, amount, purpose, recipient and approval, with a receipt or other supporting document attached. The voucher records the cash movement; the merchant receipt shows the purchase.

Petty cash exists for modest expenses when an ordinary purchasing channel is impractical, such as a small urgent office item or an approved local fare, and the fund should have a named custodian and a clear spending limit. The voucher is completed at the time of payment, not reconstructed from memory months later, and good controls are proportionate to the size and risk of the fund.

A usable voucher has a unique number, payment date, amount, expense category and brief business purpose, with the person receiving the cash and the person approving it recorded. Attach the original receipt where available, or document why it is absent under company policy.

If a payment is an advance rather than a final expense, identify who owes the supporting receipt or unspent cash and by when, otherwise an advance can vanish into a stack of ordinary expense vouchers. In an imprest arrangement, the fund has an authorised fixed amount, and as cash is spent, supported vouchers represent the value to be replenished.

If the fund is set at $2,000 and contains $640 cash and $1,360 in valid unreplenished vouchers, the total is $2,000, though this works only if all payments have been recorded and vouchers are not counted twice, and advances and outstanding replenishments may require separate lines in the reconciliation. Connecticut's state petty-cash guidance gives a concrete control example: it expects the authorised balance to be accounted for by cash, bank balances and outstanding vouchers, with receipts and reconciliations retained.

Those are that state's procedures, not a law automatically binding a private business elsewhere. The underlying practice is still useful: count real cash, reconcile the supporting paperwork and investigate any difference rather than plugging it with an unexplained voucher.

A voucher should not be approved by someone with an interest in hiding the transaction, so divide custody, approval and periodic review when the team is large enough. A small business may not have three staff members, but the owner can review the cash count and supporting receipts independently.

The University of Washington's guidance on revolving funds distinguishes the custodian, reconciler and approver roles and calls for timely reconciliations, so adapt the control to the organisation's staffing and policy. When replenishing, tally vouchers by expense type and compare their total with the cash needed to restore the fund, and keep the reimbursement evidence with the voucher register.

A replenishment payment is not a second expense for every voucher: if records treat the original cash disbursement and the fund top-up as two separate operating costs, reported spending doubles, so have the accountant set the entries and check them against the ledger. At each count, compare physical cash with approved outstanding vouchers and other properly documented components, investigate differences promptly, record who performed the review, and watch for old advances, vouchers without approval, repeated identical amounts and receipts submitted twice, because a small fund deserves simple controls precisely as individual payments can otherwise be forgotten.