Keeping savings group records anyone can check

Five, and no more. Groups that add books stop filling them in, and a half-kept book is worse than no book because it looks like a record and is not one.

Everything lives in the box between meetings, except the passbooks, which go home with the members who own them.

The passbook is the member's own copy of the truth, and its whole value is that she holds it. If passbooks are kept in the box, the group has one record instead of two, and no member can check anything between meetings.

She brings it every week and it is stamped in front of her, after her money has been counted onto the mat and not before. This ordering sounds pedantic until the week somebody is stamped for shares she then cannot pay, and the ledger and the box disagree by exactly that amount.

If a passbook is lost, the group ledger is the record and a new book is written up from it in the meeting, read aloud, and signed by the chairperson. That is the second reason the ledger has to be kept properly. It is the backup for thirty women at once.

The secretary writes in all five books during the meeting. She does not take them home. When the meeting closes they go into the box, the box is locked with three padlocks, and the box goes home with the box keeper who holds no key at all.

The three key holders should not be from one household and should not be relatives. It is not an accusation. It is that a group cannot investigate anything if two of the three keys were sleeping in the same room.

The rule underneath all of it is one sentence: nobody holds the books, a key and the box. Every arrangement a group invents should be tested against that sentence before it is agreed.

The close is the most important five minutes of the meeting and it is the part groups start to rush at about month four. Two counters count the cash, out loud, in the language everyone in the circle speaks. Then they count it again, swapping who counts what.

The chairperson reads the total back to the group. The secretary writes it on the count sheet, both counters sign or thumb-print, and only then is the box locked.

Next week that number is read out first, before anything else happens, and compared against what is in the box. Two totals, a week apart, checked by different eyes. That is the entire audit, and it works.

Reading is not the point. Checking is. A group can be completely auditable to a member who has never been to school, provided everything important is said out loud and shown.

Stamps are countable. Beans or bottle tops laid out on the mat make a total visible before it is written. Every figure that matters is spoken as well as written, and any member may ask for her balance to be read out at any meeting without giving a reason, which is a rule worth putting in the constitution so nobody has to feel bold to use it.

Where a member wants help with her passbook, she chooses who helps her. Not the secretary by default and not somebody appointed for her. A woman who picked her own helper will say something when the numbers look wrong.

At the moment the money leaves the bowl, not later that evening. A loan written up afterwards is a loan somebody remembers rather than a loan the group recorded.

Write the date, the borrower's name, the amount in words and in figures, the repayment date, the service charge, and take her mark. Then read the whole entry back to her aloud in front of the group, and have two members witness it.

Reading it back is not distrust. It is how a borrower who cannot read the ledger still knows exactly what she agreed, which is the difference between a firm claim and an argument nine weeks later about what was meant.

Stop, and do not lock the box. Recount from the beginning with two different counters, slowly. Most differences are arithmetic and most are found on the second count.

If it still does not agree, write both numbers down and write the difference underneath. Do not adjust the ledger to match the cash, and do not adjust the cash to match the ledger. The moment a group starts making the two agree by hand, it has no records at all.

Then handle it at the next meeting with the constitution in hand, and handle it as a difference rather than as an accusation. Treating every shortfall as theft is how groups lose good members and good treasurers, and most shortfalls are a miscount or a note stuck to another note.

Books are lost far more often than money is stolen. A strong polythene bag inside the box, closed properly each week, deals with damp and with the roof that leaks in the second half of the rains.

The box should sit off the floor, on bricks or a raised board, and not in a kitchen. Termites take paper quietly and are usually only discovered when somebody needs a page from four months ago.

Some groups photograph the closing page each week on a member's phone. It is a cheap backup and worth doing, as long as everyone understands the phone is not the record. The book is the record and the photograph is only insurance against losing it.

Nothing surprising, and a group keeping its books properly can produce all of it inside ten minutes. The questions are chosen so that they cross-check each other rather than testing one book at a time.