Payments without an invoice

Question

Our Council holds competitions and Community Awards annually. The winners of a Community Award Receive along with a nice trophy a £50 award, to spend as they wish. Obviously there is no invoice for these £50's. How are these dealt with from a bookkeeping point of view? (Scribe).
They have historically been paid cash out of the petty cash. In my opinion this is too much to be going out of petty cash (£300 in total) and have suggested we make them by bank transfer so that they go through the Scribe system and are recoded against our Events budget.  But there is no invoice.

Answer 1

Why not raise an agenda item for these awards and then present a document to the Chair at the meeting to sign once a resolution has been passed.  Then you can put that document into your records as the 'invoice'.  I would suggest that minutes of the meeting, plus a signed document would satisfy the auditor that the decision to pay £50 award was done correctly.

Comments

Its strange as I am currently in dispute with my PC in that  two senior  Cllrs verbally agreed to refund me expenses incurred when repairing a PROW (with HA authority)  only to have the payment countermanded by the Clerk as being unlawful in that prior authority had not been obtained from the PC and that under no circumstances could retrospective payments be made.   I am sure when reading up about this that the holding of petty cash is not permitted but will check.(Para 6.19 Nalc Finance Regs)?

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Councillor expenses can be refunded but not charges for services unless the council has gone through a formal process to appoint the councillor to do the work.  I would also question what authority 2 senior councillors thought they had to get the work undertaken.
Petty cash ideally should not be allowed but in a practical sense, the reimbursement of small expenses, as long as it is properly managed is fine.