Banking was Manual (Current Account)

After spending 1 week doing very basic counter banking job at the branch, I was assigned to the Current Account Department. Each Current Account staff was assigned a 'ledger' each. 'Ledger' here means the starting account numbers - 1, 2, 3 or 4. Account numbers were then assigned to an account holder based on the alphabet of his/her name of his/her company. If you name or your company's name starts with "A", you account number will start with number 1; which is what we called 'ledger 1'. Mistakes in posting to the wrong account are mitigated by the 'check digit' assigned to each account number.

All postings to the respective account 'ledger' be it cash cheques, cash and cheque deposits, transfers, cheque clearing or other miscellaneous debits and credits; will be done by the clerical staff handling each respective ledger. All cheques and transfers transaction will be kept until the end of the day for balancing purposes. Each clerical staff handling the 'ledger' will have to 'balance' their 'ledger' individually. Ledger balancing means making sure that the amount posted in the 'ledger cards' - debits and credits including reversals will tally with all the documents supporting the posting. This is done by taking the 'sum' of the new balance in the 'ledger card' and subtracting the yesterday's closing balance (the amount supposedly posted into the 'ledger'). The supporting debits and credits documents are also 'casted' to a nett 'sum'. The 'sum' from the all the 'ledger cards' are then compared against the 'sum' of the supporting documents. If both figures tally, that means we are 'balanced'. If not, the 'overtime' will be longer.

If there is a difference between both 'sums' or if it does not tally, this means that there may be a mistake in postings, missing supporting documents or a host of other mistakes or 'problems' arises during the banking operation day. As we are 'experts' in our Current Account operations; casting with 4 fingers, we would normally solve the 'not balance' problem before the end of the evening. However, since balancing does not start till late, working long hours into the night among Current Account Department staff is considered 'normal'.