Youth Escrow Funds

by Scott
(Columbus, Ohio)

I'm looking for some advise about how to handle collecting youth funds that will be given back to the kids for meals.

Every other year my youth group goes on to a 3 day youth conference. To ensure the kids have money to eat everyday I had them pay into the youth fund ahead of time & then I gave them each a part of their money back at the start of each day.

At the end of the conference the kids have all received their money back & no one could spend all their food money the first day.

This worked great for the kids, but my church admin made me collect receipts for all of the money (as in 50 receipts for fast food & gas station snacks). I understand the purpose of this because he needed documentation for the money behind taken out of the youth funds, but it was a lot of work rounding up receipts from everyone.

So my question is, what's a good way to collect money from kids just to give it back to them as cash?