"petty cash" - do you reconcile? i.e. do you expect your nanny to provide receipts?

[Tutter]

not sure whetehr this counts as sensible money management, or might give the wrong impression (suggesting i don't trust her) - wondering what the norm is...

(i give her around £30 a week)

no
i just give her money as she needs it

I give nanny around 50 a week and and she ccounts for all of it - it's used for cabs or transport with DS, any food shopping for her that I forgot or if she wants to do something special for DS meals etc. I just tell her that I want receipts etc and she is fine with that.

what about an initial float of £50..then pay her for every receipt she produces weekly. That way she has a little extra in case she ever needs it but you also do not have to guess where you're money goes....?

No, but then my nanny doesn't spend that much. I always start off askign her to keep receipts but actually it isn't really needed so just top up purse as and when.

I think asking for receipts gives a very good impression - because it implies that you look after your own money carefully. It's not about trust, it's about budgeting and wanting to know where your money goes.

Agree with Anna I have receipts for everything if we oversepnd then I lnow where to cut back on.

We used to use a jam jar - we topped it up when it looked low and nanny was meant to put receipts in, but more often than not, she didn't.
Last nanny we used a purse which I thought would be easier since she could take it out with her, but she didn't, just used to take the notes out and then I had no idea whether she had spent it all, and if she had, what it had gone on.
To some extent I am happy not having the receipts but sometimes it would come in handy, both my nannies had a habit of buying the children treats (magazines, sweets, toys) which if I knew I was paying I would ask not to buy so many (got very annoying to have children begging for a toy everytime we went to the shops whereas previously they wouldn't have expected one)..but since I didn't know which were treats from nanny (some def. were) and which were from the petty cash I didn't feel so able to complain.
That's probably me being petty though

We do receipts for the first couple of months with a new nanny - then, once we've seen what the typical weekly spend is & where it goes, I just leave that amount each week without asking for receipts. (The amount's been pretty steady over the last few years, at about £40 a week.)

Agree with Bink - when our nanny started, I got her to keep receipts but now I don't as 100% trust her and the cash amount never changes. she also has a credit card on my account for things like clothes, food shopping etc which I do check each month

Should have said that cash amount doesn't vary by that much

I did ask for receipts with my first nanny and very interesting they were too. Why, for example, was the Mothercare receipt from the Oxford Street shop instead of the local one? Why did she feel the need to buy a one day travel card to go to Crechendo when she was making only a reutrn trip and in any event was insured to drive the car at vast expense - surely not so she got a free ride home The most important use of the receipts was a tracker to deal with other issues on the nanny's behaviour, but also did reinforce the message that we were not made of money.

Our current nanny is more economical, so we've fallen out of the receipt habit and I'm quite happy with that. £20 lasts about a fortnight in term time, and that includes getting meat for the boys from the butcher every now and again.

If current DN ever left us, I would ask a new nanny to keep receipts and a cash book, at least initially.

thanks all

i think we shgall leave it that if it feels right then that's good enough

she works alongside me, so i get a good idea of what she's spending and on what

i did ask her to keep receipts plus a note of other expenditure where receipts not available (e.g. money at toddler group) but prob difficult to keep track of the latter. i know she's keeping supermarket receipts

Tutter how is DS1's early waking going??

ooh not bad, thanks for asking

have a bunny clock (the one that lights up, not the 'ears' one) and he has got the hang of it. only occasionally will he cry out before bunny gets up (6:20 atm, but have plans to move it back a little)

we've even had the (very) odd day of reaching 7am or close to it

yours?

Same although without bunny clock. He just seems to have moved into another phase where her goes to sleep at 7 and wakes up c6.30 (or even 7 occasionally like today)

Thank god.

A quick non-bunny-related additon to this thread; if you don't keep receipts the tax man could see petty cash as a benefit and could make you pay tax on all petty cash your nanny has ever spent..or a taxman estimate of the amount.

On the same theme - do your nannies fill in mileage records if they use a nanny car?

We asked, but never got ex-nanny to fill one in - she used my car during the day but her own to commute to and from work, school and pre-school were well within walking distance so my car was for occasional trips to soft play, or (rare) day trips out...but I was having to fill the tank every 2 weeks..whilst now we have no nanny and live in a village, 2 miles away from school, 3 miles away from shops, we are driving everywhere and I only fill the tank once a month!
She swore to me that she wasn't using my car to drive dd back to her house to pick up her own child (after I asked her not to as I didn't want dd in the car all day and felt her ds should arrive with her in the morning) but she must have been doing it all along.

I think receipts would be good practice and help to keep things professional and makes problems easier to spot and deal with.

Any good nanny should be able to keep track of spending and account for it, same as for any other profession. Perhaps a cash tin and a petty cash book if you want to be business like.

I think it depends how you do thing, as I get £20 per week to cover all expenses (activities mostly, though sometimes extra nappies, lunchtime snack). I used to keep tabs of it myself, but these days I don't bother keeping full records, though I do make a mental note of how much things are costing. For example, cost of swimming seems to go up every year! Bread has recently gone up a little.
When I did keep tabs of it, certainly some weeks we overspent, and other weeks we underspent - which helped for weeks when oldest child (school age) was on school holiday (our expenses went though the roof then, but my budget was still the usual £20).

i spend whatever i like... and try to keep receipts, but often loose them, and write it in expenses in my nanny diray and get the cash back on the friday...

this suits me fine as i know if i had their cash and my cash i would constantly get confused, as im sure i would end up me borrowing money of them, or using my money if i ran out etc... ir even just using it for change.

If for example i go to tesco (as i just have tonight after work for new nappies) i will be sure to keep the receipt... or if we have a big expensuive day out or have a meal in a restaurnat etc i keep it... things like music / toddler groups that its the same each week i dont worry about as i dont get receipts and the cost is always the same.

Mosy £ i soend on my credit card anyway, so could always check amounts on credit card statement.

If asked i could justify EVERY penny spent

I think it's useful to ask for a summary of what the cash has been spent on at the end of each week. Whilst my nanny was not dishonest we did have different attitudes to money, and this practice enabled me to put a stop to some undesirable behaviours. - having lunch out with her nanny friends rather than coming back home after a play group. - treating the children (magazines, toys etc with our float money - Buying the children naff clothes (that they didn't need), with our float money. Inviting her mother/ friends out on day trips and expecting me to pay.