5 Top tips for preventing your business becoming a victim of fraud

Without proper fraud management training more and more businesses are finding themselves victims of theft and fraud.  It is not just small and medium-sized businesses that are affected, businesses of all sizes including large corporations can suffer from fraud if they don’t follow best practices to protect themselves.  Here are our 5 top tips for preventing fraud from occurring in the workplace.

Set standards

One of the most important things that you should do in order to protect your business from fraud is to set your employees clear standards from the very beginning.  Use an employee handbook or training sessions to teach new employees about your company’s ethics, principles and values.  Invest in fraud management training for staff to increase fraud awareness in the workplace.  There are plenty of companies like Focus Training that provide high quality comprehensive courses and training in fraud management.

Monitor payroll carefully

Payroll is a process that is open to abuse and fraud unless reviewed correctly.  Wherever possible the payroll process should be divided up between more than one person so there is no one person with control over the whole process.  This way there are always at least two pairs of eyes looking over the details to check for discrepancies.  If possible the manager or the owner of the business should take time out to review the payroll to make sure that employees are all being paid correctly and payroll is being processed properly.  This kind of monitoring is particularly important if the company has part-time or temporary workers.

Check employee references

Your businesses recruitment process should always involve checking candidates’ employment references during the interview process.  Depending on what industry you business is in it may also be relevant to perform other background checks such as credit, licensing, and criminal history.  Checking references will give you a better idea about each candidate’s reliability and trustworthiness.

Protect sensitive documents

A lot of fraud occurs due to sensitive documents falling into the wrong hands.  Sensitive documents such as bank statements and receipts should be carefully controlled, and care should be taken to ensure that there is no way for them to be intercepted.  Some business owners choose to have a separate post office box where they can go and collect their business mail from to ensure that it cannot be intercepted.  Sensitive information should also be stored and destroyed securely to avoid it falling into the wrong hands.

Have independent reviews

Theft and fraud can occur if your accounts and book keeping and accounts tasks are all performed by one person.  It is important to have an independent person outside of the organisation that reviews the company’s accounts and book keeping by carrying out spot checks to prevent fraud and theft.