Clean Audit...

As our branch clerk, I have to be audited every six months. It's a time-consuming hassle, and takes several hours if done right. I'm a believer in the U.S. national motto -- only half of which is printed on our money for space reasons. The full motto is: "In God We Trust -- Everyone Else Get's Audited". Church audits are thorough and detailed, that's why they take so long. The auditor looks at EVERYTHING -- he checks every donation in every donation batch, every check, every voucher, every bank statement, every reconciliation, every transmission to SLC-HQ, every bank receipt, everything. It's a rare audit indeed that comes out prefectly clean. My last three audits each had one single "blemish" -- called an "audit finding": SLC-HQ's bank had made a mistake over two years ago. Although the bank made the mistake, SLC-HQ charged ME (actually, our branch's account) for the amount of the error, which is their modus operandi, since most of the errors ARE made by branch clerks rather than the bank. (If you know the kind of person who usually gets called as branch clerk, you understand their reasoning -- it does make sense.) But in this case, neither I nor my predecessor (who is actually as on-the-ball as I am, or perhaps even moreso) made any mistake. It took me almost two full years, over two dozen phone calls, a dozen emails, and finally a certified letter to SLC-HQ (threatening to turn the "theft" over to the Virginia State Attorney's Office) to get them off their duff to properly investigate and fix the problem. In the meantime, my only audit point was this outstanding "mistake" which kept recurring because they continued to fail to investigate, let alone fix, THEIR bank's problem. Finally, they got it fixed -- early last year. So this time, voila, my audit was perfectly clean. No audit points, nothing at all. Everything balances to the penny, no mistakes, no errors, no outstanding or unresolved issues, no nothing. It is rare indeed not to have SOMETHING listed in the audit findings, even if it's just an overlooked signature on a check voucher or a voucher where someone forgot to enter the tax amount, or a miscoded expense or something. Minor audit points are not big deals, everyone understands that mistakes occur, oversights are easy to make. The purpose of an audit isn't to find fault, it's to find mistakes so they can be corrected and fixed. There's no shame in having audit finding. In the eight years that I served as stake auditor, I only had one ward clerk who ever had a perfectly clean audit, and that was Bro. G. M., -- Martha and Gracie's granddad over in Franklin, who several times had perfectly clean audits. It's nice to know I'm in the company of the best.