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Bbowne
Joined: 16 Sep 2008
Posts: 1
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| Posted: Tue Sep 16, 2008 3:43 pm Post subject: IF someone were stealing .... |
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| I own a small business and I have reason to believe a bookkeeper is stealing from me. However nothing "appears" out of the ordinary with my bank account. I know these are serious accusations - so I need to be sure. What other accounts should I be concerned with? What other G/L accounts should I review? How would you know if someone was "cooking the books" or not? |
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YourVirtualAssistant
Joined: 24 Feb 2008
Posts: 17
Location: Spencer, OK
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| Posted: Tue Sep 16, 2008 4:28 pm Post subject: |
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| I would get copies of the bank statements and cancelled checks. I had a client go through this with an employee and they were writing checks to themselves but recording the payments in the system to vendors, so if you were just looking at reports or the checkbook register everything appeared to be in order. We caught them by going through the cancelled checks and seeing who the checks were really made out too. |
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dp1903
Joined: 23 Sep 2005
Posts: 112
Location: Wichita Falls, Texas
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| Posted: Tue Sep 16, 2008 7:49 pm Post subject: |
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| Rebecka's reply is right on. Cash, i.e. your bank account is the account to watch. I assume you have to sign checks and that the bookkeeper does not have this authority? If not, that is something I would change. Also, if you have petty cash, that's an easy account to hide funds being siphoned off if receipts are not required to be kept. Properly handling petty cash by requiring receipts for all disbursements made out of it should cut out any theft in that area. You can audit the receipts on a regular basis. The amount of total receipts plus what is left in petty cash should equal the petty cash balance on the books, give or take a dollar or two for human error. |
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Richard Noot
Joined: 20 Aug 2005
Posts: 892
Location: Minnesota
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| Posted: Tue Sep 16, 2008 8:32 pm Post subject: Re: IF someone were stealing .... |
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Bbowne wrote: I own a small business and I have reason to believe a bookkeeper is stealing from me. However nothing "appears" out of the ordinary with my bank account. I know these are serious accusations - so I need to be sure. What other accounts should I be concerned with? What other G/L accounts should I review? How would you know if someone was "cooking the books" or not?
Personally I would hire a CFE. They are specifically trained in this area. |
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susanwhite
Joined: 13 Aug 2008
Posts: 6
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| Posted: Wed Sep 17, 2008 6:25 pm Post subject: |
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| dp1903 is right about monitoring your petty cash...In addition, I would ask the person that manages petty cash to write on the back of the receipt some information about the purchase. I have come across many situations in which all the receipts matched up to what was in petty cash but in alot of situations I had no idea what was actually purchased. I had to actually take the receipts to several establishments before I could prove that the petty cash was being spent on inappropriate items... |
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