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Greetings!
We are grateful to have the opportunity to provide you with this valuable information via our monthly e-newsletter and our unparalleled forensic accounting, expert witness, and fraud investigative services.
The goal of this e-newsletter is to provide you with critical, inside information that will help you "follow the money" in business disputes, fraud cases, corporate embezzlement, and prevail when defending an IRS criminal case. We do this by sharing our knowledge from our 25+ years of experience as an IRS Special Agent and 25 years as a private investigator / forensic accountant.
We want to write about topics that will help you prevail with business disputes, fraud, and IRS criminal cases. Please e-mail us your topics of interest to Thebeacon@sageinvestigations.com.
We encourage you to share our e-newsletter with others in your sphere of influence.
Sincerely,
Edmond J. Martin
Principal, Chief Investigator
Certified Fraud Examiner (CFE)
Texas Board Certified Investigator (TBCI)
| | 12 Top Tips to Reduce Employee Theft |
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Small business toolbox: How to prevent theft in small businesses.
President Ronald Reagan advised Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev at the arms control agreement that he would "trust but verify;" so should a small business owner. As a small business owner, your client must establish a culture of constant vigilance against employee theft. Here are 12 top tips to share with your business clients to help them prevent employee theft:
- Have company bank and credit card statements sent to their home or have a link emailed directly to them monthly. Review the statements regularly. Even if they do not see anything unusual, they should ask questions of the employees handling accounts to let them know they are watching and to keep them on their toes.
- Require monthly reconciliations of all bank accounts and review them, looking for anomalies such as checks that do not clear or long-term outstanding deposits.
- Have their accountant review the business's internal controls and suggest means to segregate duties.
- Enforce cross-training and vacation policies.
- Never give complete control of their finances to anyone, including their bookkeeper, relative, partner, etc.
- Separate cash handling and banking functions from recordkeeping functions.
- Control check stock and maintain a "used check inventory." The owner should sign company checks.
- Never allow the bookkeeper to control the establishment of credit card accounts and separate that person from the payment of credit card balances. Embezzlement can occur from bank accounts or payments on credit cards that are not monitored closely. (Annually, millions of dollars are stolen by using company credit cards.)
- Restrict access to payroll master files to prevent "ghost employee" insertions.
- Review vendor files, look for vendors receiving over $1,000 monthly, and determine their veracity.
- If your client uses QuickBooks software, ensure a separate sign-in and password for each person gaining access. Make sure the software always employs the audit function. The owner should retain access and review changes if they use QuickBooks online. The owner should learn what is needed to monitor the company's operations. QuickBooks support will be delighted to help them understand the dashboard for their account.
- Conduct formal annual background checks on all employees with access to money.
As the attorney for a small business, you are there to keep your client on top of employee and legal issues, but helping them with awareness of fraud and embezzlement can bring a deeper relationship. Protect your clients and encourage them to "trust but verify."
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Contact Us
P.O. Box 160161
Austin, TX 78716
Phone: 512-659-3179
Fax: 512-328-6878
Texas License #A10803
| | Serving your needs is our priority. |
At Sage Investigations, we are dedicated to serving our clients nationally to help them navigate the difficulties of dealing with fraud, divorce, estate and probate, the IRS Criminal Investigation, and other complex (forensic) financial fraud investigations. By narrowing our focus to our primary strength of “following the money,” we steer our knowledge, efforts, and experience to financial issues. We help our clients propel their cases forward by assisting in reviewing, acquiring, and organizing financial records, evaluating the elements of their cases, and helping create winning strategies. Through the use of our proprietary advanced financial investigative technology, we trace and analyze complex financial data quickly, easily, and efficiently, saving our client's time and money.
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