Thank you for your reply, Phil. I am printing out all of them!
PMCW

First, we don't pay anything out unless we have paperwork to go with it (receipts, contract, bill). This goes for items purchased by authorized individuals or reimbursements to the school.

Also, our Treasurer is not authorized to make a payment unless it has been voted into the budget. So in your example, if the buyer bought 20 items for $21K, the PTO would need to vote to authorize the additional $1000 in excess of the approved $20K (or the buyer would be stuck with the difference - lucky for us, this has never happened). We ususally make our best estimate for the purchase and add a reasonable amount extra in the authorization vote to cover this situation. If there is additional money left over after the purchase, the PTO votes to return the excess to the General Fund.

I am actually writing our policy right now.

We have 2 levels of 'approval'. First, The budget lists amounts to be reserved for each teacher, grade, and department. The budget gets approved as a whole.

When teachers/staff/members want us to actually buy something, they have a form to submit. The principal determines if it is appropriate and the board reviews it. If it is already in the budget, the board OKs it. If not, the membership has to vote on it at the general meeting.

Either the PTO will purchase the item, or the staff member will do it and we will reimburse once we get the receipt. We try not to give money directly to the school, but when we do (field trip funds) we send it with a letter specifying what the funds are for and we expect a receipt from the bookkeeper.

We have only dealt with our district for three things and all three times we get a receipt.

We do it both ways. Most of the time we do our own ordering and purchasing, but sometimes we have to do it through the school. For example, we bought computers for the school and had to purchase them through the school district's purchasing department. In that case we have the school do a purchase order then we give them the money to pay for the item. We ALWAYS get a receipt.

We learned the hard way not to give money to the school until they order the merchandise. Our group raised money for a PA system for the school a few years ago. It was quite a bit of money, but the principal never ordered the system and the school had the money sitting in an account. Finally when we found out they were going to use that money for something else we insisted that it be used for the PA system or be given back to group. We got the PA system.

thanks for your replies. I figured these would be the answers.

Would love to hear some more replies so I can share them with our group.

Thanks!
PMCW Horned Frog