As a small business owner myself, it’s hard and trying to control every aspect of our business.
Here’s the thing though, small and medium-sized businesses are more susceptible to fraud than larger corporations! And I know we can’t afford to lose one dime! How about you?
This tends to happen because small businesses, like ours:
often don’t have effective internal controls;
if they DO have effective controls in principle, monitoring them in an efficient and effective manner is usually a chore and often not done;
putting effective controls in place could be a tedious and expensive process
Having good internal controls means:
you remove or minimize the risk, the opportunity and the motivation for fraud and theft,
you discourage errors and identify mistakes quickly,
you are able to discourage fraud in the first place
you can take corrective action to minimise losses
A small business has limited resources, and the owner – YOU – must be active and vigilant in protecting those resources. Good internal controls help you manage resources and make sure operations are efficient and effective.
You as the Owner/manager hold the key to fight against internal control failures and must be attentive to the concept and issues of internal controls to maximise the business potential and minimise the risk of fraud, error and loss.
