Online Business Banking #FTW
I was watching a recent episode of MSNBC’s “Your Business”. In this particular one, they had a segment about embezzlement at a bookstore in Fairhope, AL. Apparently, the bookkeeper embezzled over $100,000 over a two year period. She used her position to hide bank statements, double pay herself, and write checks to pay her personal bills instead of vendors.
The owners mentioned that because they were so busy trying to keep the business afloat, they were lax in following up on the financial health of their business. Now, I was confused as to why they didn’t regularly meet with the bookkeeper. They also never had an audit performed by an outside agency. But their biggest issue? They didn’t have online business banking.
What gave it away was the part about never seeing their bank statements. With online banking, they would have known within 60 days that something was wrong. They could have also seen their check images and received alerts about wires and balance thresholds. Such a simple service could have saved them a lot of heartache and alerted them to problems.
Posted on April 7, 2011, in Online Banking and tagged Fraud, Online Banking. Bookmark the permalink. Leave a Comment.
George – Online Banking is a must, but a major mistake they made was not segregation duties. Even with small businesses, it is important if anyone is reconciling the bank statement other than the owner, then this person should not have access to write checks or even handle check stock. That is a must.
I agree, but unfortunately in a lot of small businesses the bookkeeper handles all the finances. No matter what, every business owner needs to know where the money is going. In this particular case, the owners didn’t even find out what was going on until after the bookkeeper quit to go to another job.
Pingback: The Future of Online Banking-Online Financial Management « edward lis