Today’s business regardless of its size is vulnerable to numerous types of fraud and all these have big financial impact on the business.
Fraud can occur when there is lack of control in place to prevent or deter it from happening. Fraud can be anything from cash misappropriation to falsification of accounting transactions including creating dummy customers for money laundering purposes.
Businesses owners are advised to take reasonable steps to prevent fraud. There are ways to protect your business against fraud include the following:
Screen Employees
Make all necessary background checks and follow up references, especially for sensitive positions in your business such as Finance Director who will be primarily dealing with your company financial affairs.
Train Staff
Ensure your staff are adequately trained in your standard procedures, and know what to do if there are any deviations. The staff should know who to report to when they noted or suspected fraud has occurred.
Implement Whistleblowing Procedures
Encourage, don't punish, whistleblowers, but be aware of the possibility of staff vendettas. Care must be taken when dealing with whistleblowers.
Use The Courts When Necessary
If your company has been defrauded by an outsider you may seek a civil action first. You can obtain a court order which enables assets to be traced and frozen.
Negotiate
As an alternative to the courts, you may negotiate with the individuals involved; try asking for any fraudulently obtained money to be repaid.
Use Technology And Computers
There are various IT technological options for minimizing fraud, for instance ability to recover deleted information from PCs, use of PIN numbers, and have layers of authorization access using passwords for different grade of employees within the company.
Stay Alert
Be aware of the possibility of fraud at all times and especially if things are not as normal as they should be, for instance suppliers' bills on the increase or slow collection of debts or unduly high stock levels and so on.
Two Signatories For Cheque
It would be wise to always have two signatories for signing cheques for certain amount of pay out, and for authorizing payments via online bank accounts.
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