Hot Topics

Running a small business isn’t easy. Small business owners are plagued by concerns: from keeping the business flowing and growing to making customers happy to handling incoming and outgoing expenses to finding, keeping and paying good employees. Many small business owners lie awake at night worrying about how much is in the business bank account....

Recently, this company requested a Big Insurance customer to change our bank account information and to make future payments on invoices to the new bank account. We emailed our contact at the Big Insurance Company and, voilá, the monies were deposited in the new bank account with no confirmation callback. These situations are rife with the potential for...

P-Cards offer certain conveniences organizations find appealing. However, the ease of use goes hand in hand with the ease of abuse. End-user organizations should weigh the balance of the potential benefits and pitfalls of P-Card use in order to detect, mitigate and prevent their abuse.

The Good

1. Cost Savings

The traditional procure-to-pay process is costly, often...

Many companies consider P-Cards (Purchasing Cards) to be efficient for purchasing goods from vendors. P-Cards, also dubbed Procurement Cards (ProCards), Payment Cards or Purchase Cards, are essentially charge cards, similar to consumer credit cards. With the increased use of P-Cards in the corporate, educational and government sectors, in order to choose the P-Card best for the organization.

The Basics

As the number of Asian policy holders increases, it is important to understand the cultural differences when handling claims involving Asian policy holders. These differences should be taken into account during conference calls and when conversing by email. Lack of cultural sensitivity can lead to misunderstandings and less efficient business dealings.

Tips to Remember

...

Recently, seven separate company chief financial officers in a city in Indiana received an email similar to the following from their chief executive officers:

We are in secret merger discussions. Tell no one. We have hired a consultant to assist with the
due diligence review. Please send a retention payment by wire to:

Ms....

The auto parts industry has historically experienced one of the highest frequency rates of employee theft. Why? It’s easy. Auto parts are easily stolen and sold for cash. eBay and PayPal have made it simple to obtain a larger distribution market for the employee to sell the stolen auto parts. Recently, in 2014 and 2015,...

Cyber Liability & Prevention

In April 2011, Sony’s online gaming network was hacked, compromising the personal and credit card information of 77 million users. The network outage lasted 23 days and cost Sony $171 million. A class action suit has charged Sony with negligent data security, unauthorized storage and retention of data, and failure to...

Business owners are becoming increasingly aware of numerous schemes they and their employees need to avoid. Cyber fraud lurks in many different forms, including, but not limited to:

• Auction Fraud
• Investment Fraud
• Counterfeit Cashier’s Check
• Lotteries
• Credit Card Fraud
• Nigerian Letter or “419”
• Debt Elimination
• Phishing/Spoofing
• Parcel Courier Email Scheme
• Ponzi/Pyramid
• Employment/Business Opportunities
• Reshipping
...

Running a business can be complicated and overwhelming. Owners face daily decisions. Human resources and staffing. Technology and marketing. Financial and legal. When grappling with such issues, many owners of small or middle sized companies opt to outsource their payroll processing and accounting. They turn to payroll and management companies and CPAs. Such companies offer...