Volume 2 - ElectricCanadian.com

THE BRANCH CLEARINGS SYSTEM 531the earliest days of The Canadian Bank of Commerce everybranch kept a direct account with every other branch, and theToronto office was called the head office. At the end of 1868,all the branches, except Toronto, closed their accounts witliother branches and transferred the balances to the HeadOffice Account. A transcript of the entries in this account,showing among other necessary particulars the names of thebranches debited or credited, was sent to Toronto. TheToronto branch continued to keep direct accounts with all thebranches, so at Toronto the entries in these transcripts werejournalized and posted, and the position of each branch asregards all other branches was thus ascertained. The systemwas somewhat complicated by the fact that owing to thedepreciation in United States currency it was for about tenyears considered necessary to keep separate accounts withhead office for all items payable in United States currency.These Currency Accounts, as they were called, were openedabout April, 1869, and carried on until the end of December,1878, when they were merged in the general Head OfficeAccount.The practice of passing all entries for other branchesthrough a single Head Office Account saved a certain amountof labour and expense at the branches, and tended to decreasethe time during which entries were outstanding. On the otherhand it involved a great deal of work at Toronto, which wasentirely of an unproductive character and increased veryrapidly as the business of the bank grew. An attempt wasmade at an early date to facilitate this work by instructingthe branches to send to Toronto prompt advice of all entriesoriginating at their own offices in a return called "Adviceand Remittance List/* leaving other entries to appear laterin a more leisurely manner in the transcript of the HeadOffice Account, which now passed by the name of "HeadOffice Account Current." This enabled the journalizing andposting at Toronto to be done more expeditiously, but it wasfound that the branches experienced much difficulty in