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The Pay Sheets and the Paylist are initialled by the Superintendent of Accounts and Stores, and the Paylist is signed by the Director of Public Works who certifies that the charges have been necessarily incurred, that the contracts have been complied with and that the expenditure is authorized.
20. The Paylist, with the annexed Pay Sheets and vouchers, is then sent to the Treasury where it is passed to the Examination Branch.
There the mathematical accuracy of the accounts, Sheets and List is checked, and the contract rates and authorities verified. The examining officer ticks each item dealt with and initials each account, Sheet and List.
21. From the Examination Branch the List with the annexed documents is sent to the Cash Book Clerk who stamps the Pavlist with the Treasury voucher stamp showing the date, and gives it a number as a voucher to the Treasurer's accounts and records it in a Register of Vouchers
If the Paylist refers to more than one contractor the Cash Book clerk summarises the Pay Sheets, and enters in the Cash Book the amounts payable to the individual con-
tractors.
22. The Cash Book clerk, who has custody of the cheque hooks, then prepares for signature the necessary cheques. At busy times he delegates this work to his assistant.
The cheques are then torn from the book and pinned on to the paylist, to which also is attached a slip showing the amounts of the individual cheques, and the total of all the cheques.
The Treasury number, payee's name and amount of each cheque is at the close of the day's work posted by the Cash Book Clerk or his assistant in the Cheque Register.
23. The Paylist, with the cheques annexed, is then sent to the Book-keeping Branch where the items are posted to the Daily Abstract under the appropriate heads of expen- diture.
24. Thereafter the Paylist is taken to the Colonial Treasurer's room in order that he may sign the cheques, and when he has signed them the Paylist and cheques are taken by messenger to the Accountant for his countersignature of the cheques. Then they are taken by messenger to the Despatch Clerk who sorts them and hands over to the Ilead Shroff those payable to contractors.
25. The Head Shroff detaches and retains the cheques, posting the names and amounts in Chinese in a book which he keeps for his own guidance. The Paylist he returns to the Correspondence Branch in order that notifications may be sent out notifying the contractors to call. After the despatch of the notifications, the Paylist is returned to the Head Shroff.
26. When the contractors attend to receive payment, the Head Shroff delivers to them their cheques and they sign receipts on the Pay Sheets. He then posts the payment in Chinese in the private book kept by him as above mentioned. After all payments have been made, the Head Shroff signs the Paylist as witness to the payments which he himself has made, and as witness to the signatures on the Pay Sheets. The completed Paylist is then returned to the Cash Book Clerk.
27. As some time frequently elapses between the receipt of the cheques by the Head Shroff and the attendance of the contractors, the Head Shroff often has in his hands cheques for large sums of money awaiting payment out.
To give an instance, on the night of the 1st May, 1928, the Head Shroff was found to have in his hands $67,706.81 in crossed cheques and $2,368.38 in open cheques.
28. It was formerly the practice to cross all cheques except those drawn in favour of certain contractors whose names appeared on a list of persons who had expressed their desire to have open cheques. In March, 1928, a practice was adopted of crossing all cheques for over $1,000.00; prior to this there were many uncrossed cheques for large amounts, as many contractors asked for open cheques.
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