While that’s certainly a good internal control, it’s not the only one you need to worry about.
How do you know the person with authority to pay hasn’t slipped in a fake invoice? Are their sign offs by people with authority to purchase?
How do you know that someone with the authority to purchase hasn’t slipped in a fake invoice?
Who checks that ordered goods were actually received?
Who is authorized to sign the checks? Who reviews the signed checks?
Who controls the blank checks?
What about accounts receivable? Who controls the checks (or cash) coming in? How do you know someone didn’t mark something as paid but slipped the check (or cash) in their pocket?
Does anyone open the bank statements before they’re used for reconciliation?
Who ensures that payroll checks are accurate? Or that the employee is legitimate?
Is there a whistle blower policy in place? And where do you report if you think the boss is stealing?
Just a short list of money internal controls that I would like to see in place (there are more, depending on circumstances). The fewer people you have, the more overlap you need. That makes small companies more vulnerable.
Of course, in the original post, it was the boss that was stealing. That’s a very tough nut to crack in the short term.
Thanks x 10, @AlphaWolf . I’m noting these points but I fancy that my daughter is rapidly identifying these and more as areas where things could’ve been done differently…and are already changing.
As you suggest, the weakest link that allowed for this whole debacle to reach the level that it did (the marriage as well as the business…and that’d be enough for a whole other platform, let alone thread) has been the level of trust between the two partners…correction: one of them.
Now that my daughter has begun to get to grips with how the business aspects function…and has realised that much of it is a skill set acquisition like, say, closing a PDA or pacemaker placement…there’s a sneaky suspicion that some of the structural gaps that the albatross was able to drive his pick up truck through were features that he set up with forethought rather simple opportunism or any of the other gutter trash personality flaws we credit the toss pot with (and, FWIW, that’s me being objective in my description!)
I actually asked my daughter if she thought this might’ve been a possibility a while back and I guess she wasn’t quite ready enough to see that possibility at the time. Now that all other reasonable alternative explanations have been discounted she…and Gramps…have come round to my way of thinking. Interestingly, the arrogance that prompted that strategy and its apparent success has led to such a level of sloppiness that it looks like the forensic guy’s job is actually going to be much easier than it would’ve been had the perpetrator been as devious and cunning…and, yes, intelligent…as he believed.
If the owner of a company hands an invoice to a lower level A/P clerk and tells them to include in this week’s check run, it’s not realistic to think they would push back on the boss or make demands of them. Especially, if the clerk is a single mom with 2 kids and needs the job to pay for rent, clothes, medicine, food, and much more.
The only time I got fired in my career was because I insisted the CEO had to follow the internal controls like every other employee (the CEO wouldn’t turn in credit card receipts). 3 days after a serious discussion about this, I was let go because the CEO “lost confidence” in me.
Mind you, I was a senior level employee who had many resources and options available to me. Not everyone is as fortunate.
You were lucky not to work for that company. Worthless CEO.
Where is that company today? Or how long did bo$o (the clown’s name is censored) last? If he was removed the company was better off.
I think you are wrong about that mother of 2. She would know how to deal with temper tantrums.
I hope you sued your ex-company.
I will of course admit not everyone would do the job. Many people regardless of possible repercussions would do the job quite honestly.
I will also say some companies want to go down some unsavory routes. In that case, no one will report a thing. That is not just the one person checking invoices. That is on everyone. Which is where you are leading. If that is the case it is a den of thieves. Mom is stealing as well. It happens. In college, I was around the restaurant business. You could not find more thieves. Surprised I did not get beat up all the time but I was wild and tough.
Another update…and, more important, another thank you. Having read this thread, my daughter added a few more controls to the business that have met with the forensic bloke’s approval. I think everyone involved in the various aspects of my daughter’s divorce and its consequences are shaking their heads in amazement at the awfulness of the whole thing. In the meantime, the albatross is on his third lawyer as I imagine that the previous two finally got round to telling him that he likely needed a criminal defense lawyer in addition to their services.
Anyway, the positive news is that with my daughter taking over the running of the business and implementing just the fundamentals of commonsense management, the first quarter profits look set to be almost double the previous best. To illustrate the significance of this, she was pretty much on her knees for most of January and early February so I think this bodes well for the future. Almost as important to her, staff are much happier. The reason for posting this good news is that the toss pot and his lawyer are apparently planning to file an injunction for a court appointed receiver. For all the Googling I’ve done I can find no rationale for this course of action under the circumstances. Is there something I’m missing?
I suspect it’s a bit of honest to goodness sabre rattling. Not for the first time. It just seems to me to be a real misuse of the law and court system, though … unless the stereotype of lawyers (will jump to any instruction from the paying customer) is accurate.
They’re called “solicitors” in England…seems spot on to me
I actually asked my daughter if she thought this might’ve been a possibility a while back and I guess she wasn’t quite ready enough to see that possibility at the time.
Getting philosophical for a moment…
Deciding to get married and going through with it has to be one of the most difficult decisions to make. Difficult because if decided well, it is both a huge EMOTIONAL decision and a LOGICAL one and the mode in which both of those forces need to operate for the best outcome are counter to each other.
Emotionally, you need to be open to the idea that this person in front of you is not necessarily THE proper match but at least A proper match in terms of temperment, housekeeping habits, introversion/extroversion, and a dozen other intangibles.
Logically, you need to recognize that the person under consideration could be lying to you, could be operating a giant smoke screen, could have latent issues with family, money, etc. that are not apparent to you, etc. that could make marriage a HORRIBLE mistake.
If the marriage also involves synching up careers and actually operating some sort of business together, there are twice as many logical concerns to examine and twice as many ways for the other party to be clandestinely setting you up to be bilked.
To make the proper decision, you have to operate in split brain mode for at least a period of time. You have to be optimistic about all the intangibles to avoid walking away from the “opportunity of a lifetime”. But you also need to be as absolutely selfish and cynical for your own defense to ensure the required due diligence is done on the partner-to-be.
When 41 percent of marriages end in divorce and the financial outcomes afterward often differ by a multiple, one HAS to seriously contemplate the downsides to avoid a life changing emotional and financial mistake.