Small business owners as well as service organizations are more and more
often finding themselves victims of internal theft. And while such thefts can vary from small
amounts pilfered from petty cash or items charged to the club or business that
were actually for personal use, there are some simple things that can be done
to detect, stop, prevent, or make it possible to recover such losses.
The first step to take is to make sure the person who reconciles the
checkbook is not the person who writes the checks – or at least have a second
person who also reconciles. If the check
writer is also the only one seeing the bank statement, the fox is in charge of
the henhouse!
To Remedy: Make sure that someone else is seeing the bank statement each
month. Have the statements sent to a PO
Box that your check writer has no access to rather than the business
address. Or make sure to view the bank
accounts online on a regular basis to look for aberrations or transactions that
are not authorized.
By Maura Phelan (maura@lpvlaw.com)
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