fictionpage Chapter 104 Auditing the Accounts
Chapter 104 Auditing the Accounts
On the 26th day of the first lunar month, Director Zheng arrived with two other people.
An old jeep was parked at the gate of the courtyard, with the words "Binhai County Supply and Marketing Cooperative" printed on its body. The door opened.
First, a young man carrying a briefcase came down, followed by a middle-aged man carrying a black ledger bag.
Last to come down was Director Zheng.
He wasn't wearing a Zhongshan suit, but a dark gray cadre uniform with four neatly arranged pockets, and a fountain pen clipped to the upper left pocket.
He stood at the gate of the courtyard and looked at the three wooden signs of the service station. His gaze lingered on the words "Standardization Construction Pilot Unit" for a moment before he walked into the courtyard.
Old Fang was squatting at the workshop entrance, smoking.
When he saw the jeep parked at the door, he took the cigarette out of his mouth, stood up, and draped the rag over the water ladle.
"Director Zheng." Jiang Haiping walked over from the worktable.
"Station Chief Jiang." Director Zheng stood under the loquat tree, neither sitting down nor accepting the enamel mug that Ah Guang brought over.
The young man next to him, carrying a briefcase, pulled a document out of his bag and handed it to him.
"The county and township governments will conduct quarterly inventory checks, and the inventory of used parts and purchase records at each agricultural service point will be checked uniformly. This is the check notice."
Jiang Haiping took the notice and read it through.
The notice was stamped with the county cooperative's seal, and the scope of the verification was listed as "the inventory of old parts matches the records" and "purchase documents correspond to the physical items." The date on the notice was yesterday. After reading it, he handed the notice to Lao Fang.
"The registers for the used parts inventory are all on the worktable. The purchase orders are in the ledgers, categorized by month." Jiang Haiping pointed towards the used parts warehouse. "Ah Guang, bring out all the registers."
Ah-Guang moved the registers out of the old parts warehouse, stacking them neatly from the first to the sixth register, and placed them on the worktable.
On the cover of each book, a ruler was used to write the number and the start and end dates.
Purchase orders were taken from Jiang Haiping's ledger, bound together by month with rubber bands, and each order was accompanied by a handwritten purchase requisition and inventory record.
The middle-aged man carrying the black ledger bag moved a chair and sat in front of the worktable, opened the ledger, and started reading from the first page of the first book.
He read very slowly, tracing each entry line by line with his finger on each page. When he encountered a blurry section, he would stop and ask a question, and Ah-Guang would explain it to him one by one.
The young man with the briefcase went to the used parts warehouse with the purchase order and the physical comparison table. Ding Haifeng followed behind and took down the parts from the used parts shelf one by one for him to check.
Director Zheng stood motionless under the loquat tree.
His gaze swept around the yard and stopped on the diesel engine that was half dismantled at the workshop entrance.
Ah Hai squatted down to the side, using a torque wrench to tighten the oil line connector. Under his hand was an old newspaper with several old gaskets that had been removed.
"Are we still using the old gaskets?" Director Zheng took two steps toward the workshop door.
"It's been tested. The thickness and elasticity are within the tolerance range. It can be used at a lower grade." Ah Hai stood up and turned the old gasket over to show him the edge of the gasket.
Director Zheng didn't reply, but turned to look at the stack of registration books on the worktable.
The middle-aged man flipping through the ledgers stopped when he reached the fourth one. He pointed to a line of entries and turned the ledgers around to show Ah Guang.
"This bearing housing was received into the warehouse last October and was shipped out on the sixth day of the first lunar month this year. However, the shipping remarks column says 'Hongjiadao Hong Laosan's sampan,' and the source of receipt is listed as 'dismantled parts from Baishakou rafts.' The Baishakou rafts were dismantled last September, and this bearing housing has been sitting at the service station for several months. It has not been used in between."
Ah Guang looked down at the line of entries.
He frowned slightly, opened the toolbox next to him, took out the maintenance record sheet for Hong Laosan's boat, flipped to the page on gearbox maintenance, and used his finger to search down line by line.
When he found the bearing housing section, he placed the record sheet next to the register, so that the two lines of text were side by side.
"It hasn't been used. This boat had its gearbox repaired once before, and they used new bearings then. This old bearing was used as a training part during the service station's simulation competition at the end of last year, and it was put back afterward. There's no record of the training part being borrowed in the register; I missed it." Ah-Guang's voice wasn't loud, but every word was clear.
The middle-aged man flipping through the ledger made a note in the book and then continued flipping through it.
The young man carrying a briefcase came out of the used parts warehouse, holding an old aluminum pad in his hand, and walked to Director Zheng's side.
"There are three aluminum gaskets on the used parts shelf, and the register says 'usable, pressure downgrade.' But the purchase log doesn't show the source of these three aluminum gaskets. The service station said the source of the used parts can only be recorded as 'ship scrapping parts,' but they can't remember which ship they were scrapped from."
Jiang Haiping listened to those words while standing under the loquat tree.
The aluminum gasket was found by Ding Haifeng from the bottom of the fourth row of the old parts rack. The logbook at the time noted that it was "usable but pressure-bearing capacity reduced by one level". The source was indeed recorded as "ship scrapping parts", without specifying which ship it came from.
Three months ago, when the service station dismantled that scrapped water pump, the old parts that were removed were registered by A-Guang. At that time, the pump casing was so rusted that the model number was no longer visible. The aluminum gaskets that were removed could only be confirmed to be usable, but it was impossible to determine which ship they were from.
According to the county cooperative's regulations on the management of used parts, the source of used parts must be noted with the specific ship name or equipment number, and cannot be simply written as "dismantled ship parts".
"The source record is not standardized." The young man with the briefcase put the aluminum pad back on the old parts shelf.
Director Zheng turned around and looked at Jiang Haiping. He took out a pen from his upper left pocket, opened the verification record book, and wrote a few lines on it.
"There are two problems with the management of used parts. First, the used parts used in the simulation competition were not recorded in the registration book for training borrowing, which led to a discrepancy between the outbound records and the actual usage. Second, the source records of three used parts in the warehouse are not standardized, and the specific ship name or equipment number is not noted, which does not comply with the county cooperative's regulations on the management of used parts." He screwed the pen cap back on and handed the verification record book to Jiang Haiping for signature.
Jiang Haiping took the verification record book and read it through from beginning to end.
The penmanship was neat and tidy, and each question was followed by a specific clause of the county commune's old documents management regulations, with all clause numbers written out.
After reading it, he took out his pen and signed his name in the verification record book.
After signing, I looked up at the stack of registration books on the worktable.
Ah-Guang's sixth register was already more than half full. Every page was neatly written, and each entry was marked as either usable or obsolete.
"Ah Guang. Starting today, add a column to the remarks section of all old parts issued from the warehouse: whether it was borrowed for training. Record how many days it was borrowed, who borrowed it, and when it will be returned. Go through the register and add all the training parts that were missed before."
"Understood." Ah-Guang turned to the last page of the register and began writing a supplementary note at the very bottom of the remarks column.
"Haifeng, this afternoon, go through the ship dismantling records to find the source of those three aluminum gaskets. The service station only dismantled a few scrapped water pumps last year, so check the dismantling time for each one. Once you find them, add them to the remarks column of the register. If you can't find the specific ship name, write 'Dismantled part, specific ship name to be found.' From now on, all newly dismantled old parts should be noted with the specific ship name."
Ding Haifeng nodded, took the three aluminum pads back down from the old parts shelf, opened the register and began to sketch in the old parts remarks column with a pencil.
Director Zheng put the verification record book into his briefcase.
He stood under the loquat tree and looked around the yard. The diesel engine in the workshop had not yet been installed back in, and three fishing boats were lined up on the boat rack waiting for maintenance. Hong Xiaobing and Ashun were pushing the fourth sampan from the dock to the boat rack.
Ah Hai squatted down next to the diesel engine and continued to tighten the connectors with a torque wrench.
"The verification results shall be reported to the county and township governments within three days. The rectification progress shall be reported in writing within one month." He turned and walked towards the gate of the courtyard.
He took a couple of steps, paused, and looked back at the four basins of tung oil putty covered with damp cloths on the windowsill of the kitchen.
The wet cloth was covering everything tightly, and the basins were arranged neatly.
The jeep started up, sputtering through the exhaust pipe, and turned off the seawall toward the town.
The exhaust fumes dispersed at the gate of the courtyard and were blown away by the sea breeze.
Old Fang put the cigarette back in his mouth.
He stood at the workshop entrance watching the jeep grow smaller and smaller on the seawall, then turned around and slammed the rag in his hand onto the water ladle.
The water ladle wobbled twice on the edge of the well before crashing to the ground.
"One training part was missing, and the source of the old part wasn't specified. We spent the whole morning checking six registers, and these were the only two problems we could find. He knows the service station has fewer people for centralized maintenance, so he chose this time to check. He's not checking the old parts; he's checking how much energy the service station has." Old Fang took the cigarette out of his mouth, his voice harsh.
"He followed the rules. Every single one was based on regulations." Jiang Haiping made a copy of the page in the inspection record book that he had signed, leaving the original on the worktable. "But he manipulated the timing. When he came to check the accounts during the concentrated maintenance period, he didn't pick on the accounts themselves, but rather on the service station's weakness of not having time to deal with it."
From now on, when the supply and marketing cooperative comes, be prepared to have the registration book flipped through at any time.
The training materials borrowing and returning system will be implemented starting today. For old materials, please note the source; any missing materials should be replaced, and any unreplaced materials should be marked "Pending Investigation." We won't let him trip over the same thing twice.
Ah-Guang flipped the register back to the first page of the first book and started going through the records of the training materials one by one from the beginning.
Ding Haifeng squatted under the window of the old parts warehouse, spreading last year's ship dismantling records on his lap, flipping through the water pump dismantling records page by page.
Ding Haisheng stood up from the boat, pushed up his goggles and placed them on his forehead, still clutching the welding rod box in his hand.
He looked at Jiang Haiping.
"If they come every month from now on, how can we guarantee the progress of centralized maintenance?"
"Repairing the ship during the day and updating the ledgers at night." Jiang Haiping copied the clause numbers from the verification record book onto the back of the ledger.
He wrote slowly, marking the corresponding old items after each number, mentally reviewing the registration logic of the service station's six notebooks.
Director Liu may continue to scrutinize the accounts or find other faults, but the service station cannot wait until the next audit to make corrections; it must plug the loopholes in the system now.
After he finished writing, he closed the ledger and walked to the workshop door.
"Ah Hai, after the diesel engine is installed, write down the tool list item by item. During future centralized maintenance, register all tool borrowings, including who borrowed a wrench and when it will be returned."
"Got it." Ah Hai placed the torque wrench next to the toolbox.