In the ever-evolving landscape of business, financial protection stands as a crucial pillar that safeguards the longevity and stability of businesses. As a business owner, it is imperative to recognize the significance of fortifying your financial defenses against unforeseen challenges and threats.
This blog post is the second in a series designed to empower you with an arsenal of tools, controls, and processes specifically tailored for robust financial protection. Through this series, we aim to equip you with the knowledge and strategies necessary to protect your business from financial vulnerabilities, ensuring its continued growth and success. Join us as we embark on this journey, transforming the way you perceive and implement financial protection within your business.
The second control in our series is easy to implement, no cost and is highly effective!
Review Bank and Credit Card Transactions Daily Online
In our previous post we noted the importance of reviewing bank and credit card statements monthly. The only negative for this control is the delay in review and response time. By reviewing the same data online DAILY, you can dramatically reduce these delays in dealing with cashflow issues down to hours.
The only difference between online banking and monthly statement review is a function of time – or rather, two functions of time. The first, we have already discussed – by reviewing online daily, you reduce the time lag between transactions and review, which should lead to reduced mistakes and less opportunity for fraud to take place internally. The second difference is that reviewing transactions daily actually requires MORE time overall than a single monthly review of bank statements; but usually only slightly more.
If you missed the first post in this series on reviewing bank and credit card statements monthly, click here to understand the purpose and steps to follow. These steps are the same whether you review daily, weekly, or monthly. When it comes to reviewing the transactions online daily, there are some additional benefits, which make this control even better than the monthly statement review.
When you review transactions daily, your senses become tuned in to the unique cashflow rhythm of your business. It is not so with the monthly review process; the ebbs and flows are buried. This heightened sensitivity becomes an important asset to you as the business owner informing your financial decisions in the moment.
Cash security is improved. While monthly statement reviews have been proven to be a deterrent for employee fraud or embezzlement, daily transaction review reduces the risk even further.
In the event of any fraudulent activities, reviewing bank/credit card transactions online daily gives you a much better opportunity to limit and recover losses through your bank and/or credit card companies. The sooner you make them aware of an issue, the more likely it can be resolved favorably for your business.
Lastly, when you review your banking transactions online daily, you will know sooner than later if you have cashflow problems and what is driving them specifically. That gives you the power and information to fix these problems in the short term and hopefully in the long term, as well. If you review this information monthly, you lose that time and information advantage.
In review, we have discussed two controls you can implement that are both highly effective, free, and easy to implement. Reviewing your bank/credit card statements monthly and reviewing your bank/credit card transactions online daily can be done separately or combined. Either way, you are super-charging your understanding of the cashflow ramifications of your business and reducing risk of fraud and embezzlement, too. If you are not doing either of these, we urge you to get started now!
If you are interested in getting the complete list of the Financial Protection Toolkit controls you can implement in your business, click the button below and receive it for FREE!