THEFT

What would you do?

If you discovered someone was stealing from you?  

Unfortunately, this happens in many ways and comes from the people around you that you least expect.  The good news is we don’t see it very often, the bad news is it does happen.  

There are many ways theft happens: taking office supplies or materials home, clocking hours that aren’t actually worked, submitting expense reimbursements for things other than work related, or straight-up cash out of the register and or your bank account.

So how do you set yourself up to ensure it won’t happen to you?  

The first thing is to have a system for tracking your accounting that is tied to actual bank and credit card statements. Spreadsheets are a good way to begin tracking however they are not reconciled to actual statements so the opportunity for things to fall through the cracks is very high.

The second thing is to make sure you reconcile every month and make sure they are reconciled by someone other than those spending the money!  It’s always interesting to me to find people who have a level of confidence in their accounting only to realize it’s never been actually reconciled to the statements. I especially see this in people using online accounting platforms where there is a bank feed for activity. I can’t tell you how often these feeds are not accurate.

Thirdly, now that you are reconciling to actual statements (or someone is doing it for you) the next step is connecting with your numbers. The biggest reason we do accounting is for the reporting that is created as a result: The Profit and Loss and Balance Sheet are two reports that you as the business owner want to understand really well.

You want to know your numbers so you can ensure profitability and long-term sustainability of your company AND you want to know your numbers so you can spot right away when something is off. 

Would you know if your employee was paying their utility bills through your bank account? How about their credit card? 

If you are a business that accepts cash from customers do you know that all of it is actually being deposited to the bank?

As employers, we want to protect ourselves AND we want to set our people up to win. Your team will typically think that you are making way more money than you are and that is when either the entitlement sets in or the “they won’t notice and it will be just this one time”.   

Ready to implement these three steps? We are here to help if it’s not the highest and best use of your time.

In Abundance,

Sue