Volume 2 - ElectricCanadian.com

THE BRANCH CLEARINGS SYSTEM 537of rechecking at head office all the branch entries of the previousNovember to find a difference which had escaped detection,the branches were asked to recheck their own entries,and the error was located in this way. In November, 1912,an effort was made to reduce the number of entries in BranchClearings Account by designating the principal city in eachprovince as a provincial clearing centre, to which paid draftsand small cheques for branches in the province might be sentto be reforwarded to the branch for which they were intended.It was hoped, that by thus combining a number of items,postage and labour would be saved and the number of entriesin Branch Clearings Account reduced.In the following year another step was taken in a somewhatsimilar direction, partly to eliminate certain classes ofentries more rapidly from Branch Clearings Account and thusreduce the number of outstanding items, and partly to enablethe balance of this account to be more accurately analyzed forthe monthly returns to the Government. On and after1December 16, 1912, all cheque lists were to be debited andcredited by the branches direct to Branch Clearings Account,instead of, as in the past, being debited to Cash Items Accountto await an At Credit slip from the branch to which the list wassent. Under the old system a cheque list sent by Vancouver toHalifax would be outstanding in the Vancouver Cash ItemsAccount until the Halifax At Credit slip advising its paymentwas received by Vancouver, and the amount did not disappearfrom the bank's books as an outstanding item, until the Vancouverentry made from the Halifax At Credit slip reachedhead office. The process would occupy about twenty-fourdays. Under the new system the entry would disappear fromthe bank's books in about half that time, or as soon as theVancouver cheque list reached Halifax and the Halifax entrycrediting it reached head office. The change therefore reducedthe outstanding items of this character by about one-half, andrelieved the branches of a certain amount of clerical labour in1See Head Office circular No. 1899, dated December 3, 1912.