News
Preventing Fraud in QuickBooks Part 3
December 1, 2011
In this final instalment of our series on preventing fraud in QuickBooks, we give you some tips and tricks to implement in the management of your business to keep your accounting secure. Take some time to implement some of these changes in your business.
+ Review employee work regularly. You can review employee work by reviewing reports or using QuickBooks registers. To create a report to review employee work go to the Report Centre, click Accountant & Taxes, then click Transaction List by Date. Click Customize report, then click Display. In the Columns box, select Entered Last Modified and Last Modified by. Then click OK. This report lists all the transactions in your QuickBooks file for the date range you select and includes who created the transactions. Review this report to view the data being entered by your staff.
+ Use the Company Snapshot in QuickBooks 2012 to keep your eye on expenses. You should not see irregularities or dramatic increase in expenses that you are not aware of. You can view your expenses by going to the Company Menu, then choose Company Snapshot. Review the Income and Expense Trend and the Expense Breakdown graphs to make sure that expenses are on track according to your expectations. If they are not you can double click on any number to view the transactions that make up the graphs.
+ Keep Track of Inventory to make sure that your totals in QuickBooks match your actual inventory count. You can create a Physical Inventory Worksheet from QuickBooks that will help you count your inventory and compare it to what is in QuickBooks. Go to the Items and Services list, click Reports, Reports on all items, Inventory, then choose Physical Inventory Worksheet.
These are just a few ideas that we have had around how to prevent fraud in QuickBooks. There are many tools, policies and procedures to help you prevent fraud in your small business. Stay tuned for more information on fraud as we create a new seminar to help you deal with this issue.
Preventing Fraud in QuickBooks Part 2
November 17, 2011
In our previous post we talked about two important setup items in QuickBooks. First we talked about the setup of users and how we can limit their access in QuickBooks and entering a closing date. The closing date lets you lock people out of certain periods of time and limits them from making changes to the accounting.
I wanted to talk about a few other elements of preventing fraud that relate to your QuickBooks file. There are many methods of handling different transactions in QuickBooks. An example that comes to mind are credit card charges. Often QuickBooks users just use the enter bills feature and pay the bill. When you do it this way you miss the details and you open yourself up to fraud. Here are a few other details about the setup that will help prevent problems.
Use Enter Credit Card Charges – do not use enter bills to record credit card charges, setup a credit card account. This lets you enter a transaction in QuickBooks for each transaction on your credit card statement and lets you reconcile your credit card like any other bank account. To setup a credit card account:
1. Go to the Home page, then click Chart of Accounts.
2. Click Account, then New
3. Choose the type of account as Credit Card, then click continue
4. Enter the Name of the credit card. Click Save and Close.
This creates a credit card account and lets you use the Enter Credit Card Charges window. This will let you see each credit card transaction in QuickBooks and easily identify what charges might be fraudulent.
Another useful tool is purchase orders. Purchase orders let you enter orders for vendors and lets you add that valuable step of approval. Using purchase orders in QuickBooks lets you add a policy that tells your staff that nothing is paid without a purchase order. So when the bookkeeper goes to pay a bill and there is no matching PO in QuickBooks, the bookkeeper should not pay it and should review it with staff. This is a powerful tool in preventing fraud. To create purchase orders:
1. Go to the Edit, then Preferences, then click Items & inventory.
2. Click Inventory and Purchase Orders are active.
3. Click OK. They now appear on your Home Page.
4. Go to the Home page, then click Purchase Orders.
5. Enter the purchase order as necessary.
This will help you to ensure that all purchases in the business are approved for the business and that staff or vendors are not being paid for unapproved items and expenses.
Use these two transactions as two additional tools to prevent fraud in QuickBooks.