Category Archives: 3 Controls

How to best manage your bank account?

As the main resource you generate with your business, is money, you want to make sure everything is in order when it comes to having an overview and managing your money. There are a couple of real life best practices I for one have in use for my own personal finances and have seen being used in other businesses as well.

First things first – create at least two separate accounts. One should remain the account you pay your invoices from and the other one is to be used by your customers (basically the account your cash inflows go to). At the end of the month (or week, which ever suits the best) you just transfer all those inflows to your other account you make payments from. This way you have a clear overview and simple structure as to from which account the payments have been done and where the money comes to.
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Are your bank payments authorized?

Ever since you’re taking yourself an accountant or you’re outsourcing accountancy alongside with bank payments, you have to ensure that the cash outflow is authorized. All payments done should be authorized obviously by none other than you, the manager or owner of the company.

Generally speaking, already in medium sized companies, if there’s an accountant (or team of accountants for that matter) there should always be someone else at least reviewing the payments. There are two main reasons for it – to prevent any mistakes and prevent any false payments.

We are all humans and as such, we tend to make mistakes – either with numbers, receiving party etc. The more there are payments, the easier those mistakes are bound to happen. We all do them and there’s nothing wrong in doing them. I have heard from countless accountants that they either really want someone authorizing the payments or if already implemented, they hugely appreciate it.
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How to make yourself a checklist?

How to make checklist There are many things you can make a checklist for, but there are a few simple thoughts to keep in mind when preparing one. In essence making a checklist is easy – you list things and can be done with it, but a well thought through checklist requires just a tiny bit more.

First things first – it all should be considered and prepared as a flow – a flow of process or activities logically grouped and listed. A good checklist enables you to meet deadlines and plan timely, so for an example, it must have things that require additional information from someone else or any prerequisite documents, information obtained as soon as possible, listed as first things that need to be done. For the checklist to be a tool, it requires for it to be logical and reflect the process’ natural course.
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Benefits of a good checklist

Good Checklist There are quite a few checklists out there for various things. But why would someone want a checklist when they know what they have to do by heart and everything is so in routine for them anyway? Because what a checklist in essence is, it is a list of things one should do and you can check things that are done thus enabling you to see actions still need to be taken.

Why? Just because of the very same reason. If there are things in routine, you’re bound to forget some of them. A good and well thought through checklist ensures that you can manage your time better, prioritize your time on right things, have all prerequisite information already at hand, prepare needed documents sooner rather than later, appreciate others’ time and workload planning their resources timely, meet all reporting deadlines and requirements, etc.
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Appropriate access rights

When it comes to means of data protection, most people can only think of passwords. Yes, they prevent any third party access obviously and are essentially as important as any other security measure, one thing often overlooked however are the access rights.

We say ‘access rights’ in terms of what data and actions the user is allowed to view and perform in the system. You don’t want everyone to be able to do everything now, do you?
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When is a password good?

There is a saying that you simply cannot repeat some things enough. One of those areas is security. Whilst physical security in terms of alarms, locked doors etc is as important, with this post we are focusing on data protection and namely passwords.

It has come across in our practice, that there are programs with no password at all or it is simply this week that it is essentially useless. When asked ‘why even bother with the password then if it is the same for everyone and (to make things worse) is only comprising of two characters?’ you usually don’t get a reasonable answer.

Since most accounting software programs and similar or supporting applications let you customize the password settings, it is best to make use of this.
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