Happens to me on Annual Camp every year!
If you think of 40 Cadets at circa £50 each then you’re going to have £2,000 as Camp Comm/Adj on day one. Some camps I’ve known there be safes, other times its just locked away somewhere safe!
Then when you go out on trips the good old A4 brown envelope accompanies you stuffed with cash 
Indeed - how else would one bribe the Fuzz without quick and ready access to cash!
Seems a fairly sensible approach to me. Cadets all pay up in advance of the deadline. Treasurer banks the cheques and issues cash to the camp comm, who can then go to camp and pay the various bills.
saves the problem of little johnny turning up and ‘forgetting’ to bring their camp money with them (despite constantly having a supply of sweets from the spar). Also helps with the problem of cadets not bothering to turn up for the bus. At least if their parents have paid in advance, they might get round to kicking them out of bed.
Or, another radical thought (and it’ll never happen, as it involves common sense). Wing get the money in advance, bank it, and then the station simply charges the wing UIN for the messing for the nominal roll submitted in advance. No cash needs to be touched. Remainder of the money goes with Camp comm as cash for off station visits (or wing could even book them in advance and get better deals).
That’s exactly how we did it for RIAT, worked a treat. We had a team finance officer (muggins 'ere) and it was great. Even bought em all a Maccy D’s on way home 
[quote=“cilewis” post=9667]
Or, another radical thought (and it’ll never happen, as it involves common sense). Wing get the money in advance, bank it, and then the station simply charges the wing UIN for the messing for the nominal roll submitted in advance. No cash needs to be touched. Remainder of the money goes with Camp comm as cash for off station visits (or wing could even book them in advance and get better deals).[/quote]
That hardly saves time. Cash still needs to go with the camp. In fact that just makes it inherently more difficult as the wing treasurer now needs to get a record of 200-400 cadets, if they are messing exempt, who has been paid, to where, if they change at the last minute. It’s far far easier to do on the fly on day 1 of getting there.
Camp Adj is the easiest job going once you have seen how it works. It takes all of five minutes to get the bill and pay it and is far easier to work on the hop should something come up suddenly (bowling alley burns down, programme rained off new activity required, transport messed up (prior booking voided)).
Stop making it complicated people. Honestly, some people gripe about the ATC and it’s difficult way of working. I wonder sometimes.
I’m with ON here
I’ve been adj or cc several times and experienced nominal rolls that have changed, with changes in the number of exempt cadets, which if it was done in advance would have caused considerable problems if messing was paid in advance.
While paying for an activity in advance to, maybe, get a better deal sounds OK, but the one thing I’ve always found is that camp programmes are to coin a phrase “subject to change, without notice”. Could you imagine having pre-booked and paid for an activity and then ops get on the phone and say we can take all the cadets for a flight, as has happened.
So I’d sooner do it on the fly.
JPA wouldn’t be of any assistance as it is not a tool for this kind of situation, however as stations/regiments/ships are able to receive and account cash I don’t see why wing HQs cant? (especially as most sqns seem to be able too!)
Because the finance is handled by the wing committee in the same way that squadrons do. The public accounts at wing is used to pay for minibus’ and stationary, and cannot accept incoming funds.
So maybe forward thinking wing committees should start to accept monies via BACS/PayPal or perhaps they should attend WHQs at certain times and operate a “Bank” where funds can be deposited in cash for various activities.
So maybe forward thinking wing committees should start to accept monies via BACS/PayPal or perhaps they should attend WHQs at certain times and operate a “Bank” where funds can be deposited in cash for various activities.[/quote]
Ours does BACS but I don’t think they are ready for PayPal as yet - you go to far sir!
So maybe forward thinking wing committees should start to accept monies via BACS/PayPal or perhaps they should attend WHQs at certain times and operate a “Bank” where funds can be deposited in cash for various activities.[/quote]
The admin staff can accept cash on behalf of the wing committee already, so there’s your “bank”. BACS anyone can do now but it’s hard tracking who has paid who for what etc because banking reference numbers are gash. Payapal is fine, but you have to remember to add the paypal charge to your fee!