I can't wait for the year to end. I am just hating this Center. Here is tonight's saga.

Came to bowling a little early and saw a few fellows outside having a cig. One approaches me and asks if I heard that a particular bowler bounced a check a couple of weeks ago. Now, I normally wouldn't know this, but I am an Officer of the league, and I think I should know, and not be told by one of the bowlers.

So, I went inside and pushed the question with the Asst Mgr.

It seems a bowler took cash out of the envelope, replacing it with a check, and it bounced. That bowler has not bowled since. The Asst told the individual team about this, but none of the officers knew this. I asked the Treas, and he knew nothing. Together, we went to the Mgr for the story. The team is out $80 for the night, and a bank service charge of $30 will also be passed on. We have just had our payout meeting, and we knew nothing about any team shortage. Both the Treas and I, the VP, jumped on the New Mgr for not telling us. We now have to adjust the team payouts.

Then, we went to that individual team record. And, were we shocked. The Treas turns over all the money collected to the House for banking, and reconciles each team collection. What he didn't realize was that 2 bowlers had prepaid for the balance of the year, and 1 bowler was $200 delinquent. He doesn't reconcile bowler by bowler each week, so he couldn't have noticed this. I said the league envelopes have a space for each bowler, and this team showed blanks on that particular bowler for a while. But, because the 2 bowlers had prepaid, his reconciliation always showed the team as overpaid for the past month. Now we only have 1 week left, and the team is in arrears.

I went back to the Mgr and had some words because this happened 3 weeks prior and the officers didn't know of it. I didn't care that the Asst told the team. The Asst is nothing but another bowler in our league. Protocal would say that the officers would have been notified. And, I didn't like the fact that I was told by another bowler who was outside having a cig. That was a heck of a way to find out.

We submitted our payout request by team based on points at the end, and cash envelopes that the House was going to prepare. Now, we are short by a couple of hundred dollars, and this team has to be refigured. The team will lose $310 in their payout. They will obviously take it from the delinquent bowler's amount.

I'm done with this house. Only 2 more weeks to go.

Our rules clearly state that a bowler who is delinquent for 2 weeks cannot bowl until paid. This has been unnoticed for over 2 months due to a quirk in our league process of reconciliation.

So if I am correct, that team should forefit its points since the bowler has been 2 weeks behind as they knew this from all the way back to where he was behind. I hate to see a team lose money because of someone, but you should at least know whats going on with your team.

It's pretty sad that you found out that way and had to investigate things on your own. Most leagues have the pay before the last 2 weeks as a general rule, but not hard and fast. This might be a good time to reevaluate the way things are done with the treasurer, but the onus falls on the treasurer to square everything away. There are always a few bowlers who make it impossible to have an enjoyable time. I am happy to hear that it's been brought up before the last week of the year though. Money is almost always something that is griped about.

Money issues always make bowling interesting. We had our payout for my tuesday mixed league this week, and everyone is wondering where $750 in 50/50 money went, as well as where we accumulated $450 in 'office supplies' spending.

And the President is supposed to check the finances monthly. There is no quirk. So if a bowler is more then 4 weeks deliquent (or 2 months) then that's also the President's fault.

These things happen every year. And a league meeting can be held suspending the bowler's card, the Secretary's card, the Treasurer's card and the President's card for not doing their job.

There's nothing in the rules that says the Sec. or Sec./Tres. is supposed to be the league police. There is a board of officers and they all should be working together to make sure the league is financially even.

I have said it before and I'll say it again. NEVER bank with the house. They are invested in getting their lineage paid first and foremost. Not the league's prize fund. I know leagues that don't accept checks. And leagues that are required to pay monthly rather then weekly.

And crap like Office Supplies, need to be itemized out at the beginning. Not just sprung on the league at the end. Because most Sec. and Sec/Tres fees include expenses. If your league doesn't then it needs to be in the league rules. If its NOT in the league rules then its not an allowable expense.

Erin

Erin

$450 for office supplies? Did you buy a whole office or something? What could they have possibly had to buy? That is outlandish.

There are lots of rules and suggestions that you can do to prevent a lot of these issues, basically checks and balances, but I won't get into them.

Unfortunately, there are a few things that are easily not anticipated at the beginning of a season. I was a league secretary/treasurer for 15+ years, and there always is some kind of problem with money. A couple of years ago in our league, there were 3 deaths (all between February and May), and it was customary before I took over the job of secretary to send flower arrangements to the families/funeral homes. Nowadays, a decent looking arrangement can cost anywhere from $65.00 to $115.00. Maybe all leagues don't do this, but this is just an example of unexpected expenses.

I certainly can relate to the scenario of a bowler taking the cash out of the envelope and then bouncing a check. This has happened more than once in our league over the years. Usually, the guy will disappear after he's done this. You can do what you can to track him down, and then you can send him his registered letter, notifying him that he'll be suspended, but this usually ends up with no response from the offender. Even though it's a small fee, still the cost of sending the registered mail is another unexpected expense. And as was mentioned, the cost of the bounced check is money that can't be planned for, ahead of time. Unfortunately, all leagues can't command that only cash be accepted--there are quite a few people that don't carry much cash on them--only checks or credit/debit cards--and the bigger the league, the more chance of this situation being the case.

I don't know how it is nowadays, but the President was never a paid position when I ran a league. Maybe it's unnecessary, but a nominal fee for President might inspire a volunteer for the job to be more diligent and hard-nosed about the monthly audits.

It's not too unusual to hear that a secretary/officer would hear about a bounced check from a third party on the way in to the bowling center. If a bowling center gets a new day manager, s/he may not have it on the top of his/her agenda to telephone the league officers about a bounced check, or it may not be in the strict policy of the bowling center to notify the officers in addition to the team responsible for the money. Or the check may have been put through the bank more than once, and not officially bounced until the following league date, which wouldn't leave any time for the officers to be notified. There are always people who arrive at the bowling center ahead of time, and somehow gossip just seems to spread from within the bowling alley, to these early arrivers. Then they seem to take pleasure in passing the gossip as 'hot breaking news' to someone who's an officer of the league.

I understand that a league's officers and board of directors are responsible for the league's finances. I don't know if I'd quite go as far as suspending all the officers' cards for not doing their job. If the officers are doing a good job for the league overall, it might be a little extreme to remove all these people from their positions, and subsequently replace them with people who don't know all the ins-and-outs. When I did the job of secretary/treasurer, I usually just took the hit at the end of the year from my salary in some of the minor, isolated cases. I always felt that the job of secretary/treasurer was too generously paid a position, especially when the President received nothing. But, usually, the feeling amongst the league as a whole was to take money out of the 50-50 to cover stuff like bounced check fees, mailing costs, flower arrangements, additional rolls of 50-50 tickets, etc.

Anyway, right or wrong, these are just my extended thoughts on the matter.

Roddo4

Dennis, the house and team is responsible for handling the money, they should also be responsible for making up the difference in arrears.

If the team was due to get $500 and were short two hundred, they will only be getting $300 not the entire league be shorted over it, that's common sense, let the teammates track the delinquent bowler down and get their money, or the house should take responsibility since they were the ones responsible and taking a fee for handling the money and make up the difference themselves.

Next year don't bowl in a league unless the league officers are responsible for the money.

I fully understand this. But, that begs to question why there are officers? The Officers should have been notified of a bounced check and any resultant action. In this case, the House went directly to the team, and somehow, word of mouth carried outside the House without the Officers even knowing of the situation.

The second point to question is the Treasurer's reconciliation procedure. He collects the weekly fees. Summarizes the amount by team. And, prepares a deposit cover sheet with the money. He does this on a team by team basis, and because he doesn't tabulate each bowler, he overlooked the fact that 1 bowler had accumulated the shortage. And, if a bowler prepays the season, the team looks like it has overpaid rather than one bowler being short and another ahead.

Third, our league rule of 'No bowling if 2 weeks delinquent' has no teeth. There is no penalty other than you don't bowl. The team doesn't lose the bowled games either. But, without a reconciliation for each bowler, you don't know who is delinquent, and Officers can't enforce this rule. When I looked at the House records, they do in fact input payment bowler by bowler right off the payment envelope. They had the data, but notified everyone too late. It doesn't seem too terribly difficult to produce a delinquent or shortage report that the Officers/Treas can determine if the bowler was sick, on vacation, or absent, versus a continued no payment, and then enforce the rule.

I guess this is why another House has a sign that "checks up to $25 will be accepted with an accompanying $50 cash deposit".

We had a similar situation last summer. I was President of our PBAx league and one bowler at the end of the year bounced 2 checks and was behind by $120 for a total of $180 in arrears and fees. The team payout was $181 and I had to give them an envelope with $1 and explain what happened. They were NOT happy and had some choice things to say about the 3rd member of the team who conveniently didn't show up on payout night.

It happens and it sucks but you have to do what you have to do to make the money right for everyone who DID follow the rules.

BTW, "office fees" ought to be covered by the lineage, or if not, then the amount charged should be spelled out in the league contract with the house prior to signing. I'd suggest going over the contract and seeing what it has to say about that charge.

Its always something to take some of the fun out of bowling, I do belive it is a little wrong to penilize the whole league for one person who did not pay. Thats just not right. just my 2 cents