I know Troll does book fairs also, but we have always used Scholastic. Our librarian likes Scholastic better.

Is their any other organization besides Scholastic? The books my son brings home are marginal at best in terms of content.

Anyone have luck with another vendor?

Also, did you know that you can get a MUCH better percentage by setting up a Scholastic Book Fair "Warehouse Sale", rather than the regular sale? The WH sale format pays 50% in Cash, or 100% in Books (plus bonuses), or you can do the "buy one, get one" thing and break even. If you didn't know this already, ask your Scholastic Rep for details. Email me if you need more details!

Can I get info on these 2 sales please? I keep reading about them, but don't seem to be able to learn enough about them. Thanks.

About the original question- I was told by Scholastic that a "certain amount" of theft is built into your sale (no particulars given of course) after we had a tremendous amount of theft at one sale BY THE PARENTS! We now have a "bouncer" who stands at the door at our family events and makes sure everything is in a bag or otherwise marked "PAID", and the theft has almost disappeared.
As far as volunteers setting books aside, as the chairperson I generally am there from open to close so I know who has paid for what; if I do get to leave, most of my regular volunteers are good about waiting until I'm there to pick up their books. I've never insisted on it, it's just happened that way.
The only way to possibly stop someone from walking off with cash from the cash box is to always have 2 people working the fair-not always feasible, I know-and some groups only let board members handle cash. When I do have help I usually run the register (which we do have) while the other person helps the kids.
Coming from a retail background as I do, the Scholastic way of doing things seems to be rather loose and poorly organized, but they're obviously making money since they gobble up every bit of their competition.

I'm the Book Fair chairperson at our school and we did two book fairs (Scholastic) last year. I was new and was also amazed that you didn't have to keep track of inventory. I think Scholastic just assumes they will lose a few books but they trust you to keep track as best you can. We did have some theft (we have a big school and hold the book fair in a small space and it's impossible to watch every kid every second) but we ban all backpacks and coats from the fair area and that seems to help. At the end of the book fair you just close up the cases and pack up the boxes and they get sent back to the warehouse. They don't ever really count every book that comes back. I guess if you were dishonest you could keep a lot of "free" books but I can't imagine anyone in charge of a fundraiser being that dishonest.

I asked our treasurer for the "bank" to start the fair - I think it was $200. Every night when I counted the receipts I kept out $200 and didn't include that money in the total. Scholastic gives you a sheet to keep track of your daily deposits and credit card slips. At the end of the book fair I gave that $200 back to the treasure separately from the other book fair cash. Hope this answers your questions.

It's true that for Scholastic you don't need to keep track of books. I guess they know what they sent and know what we send back and would tell us if there were a big discrepancy. We haven't had any problems.

We had our school spirit store open at the same time as the book sale (selling cute pens and pencils, erasers, pencils grips, novelty notebooks) and had two separate cash boxes and checkouts. We couldn't keep them straight otherwise.

I have a similar problem to share - I am chairing the School's Holiday Shop to which I am adding a Scholastic Book Fair to run in the same area.

The Holiday Shop normally has 125-150 different items, to which I am adding 250 different books and the like. I was beating my brains out on what to do when it occurred to me: WE NEED A CASH REGISTER!

It turns out that Sam's Club offers a $198 register with a bar code scanner, as well as room for 1000 PLU (UPC) codes. I decided to just scan all the books and holiday items into the register the day before the event (like 3-4 hrs work) so that we KNOW exactly who was owed what (how much for books, gifts, etc) at the event. OK, it sounds kinda extreme, but this way we'll know exactly how many of each item sold, and when (what classes bought what items), so we can plan next year's event. We'll also use the register at the Spring Book Fair as well as other fund raisers. Just a thought....

Also, did you know that you can get a MUCH better percentage by setting up a Scholastic Book Fair "Warehouse Sale", rather than the regular sale? The WH sale format pays 50% in Cash, or 100% in Books (plus bonuses), or you can do the "buy one, get one" thing and break even. If you didn't know this already, ask your Scholastic Rep for details. Email me if you need more details!