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Tuesday Tips and Tricks

December 3, 2013

We're Your Bill Payment Center

Off-Site Business Services can assist smaller organizations in strengthening some of their internal controls through a new web based online bill payment system. It provides a low cost solution to help small organizations who struggle with internal controls when it comes to bookkeeping and accounting.

According to the 2012 Report to the Nations on Occupational Fraud and Abuse, organizations with fewer than 100 employees continue to be the most common victims of employee related fraud. Private companies, not-for-profits and government agencies make up nearly two-thirds of the reported cases of fraud. Many of these organizations have fewer than 100 employees, and generally there are not enough staff members to facilitate the processes necessary for good internal control.

Smaller organizations are most vulnerable to billing fraud due to the difficulty in creating and maintaining good internal controls. Check tampering is three times higher in small businesses than larger ones. Skimming, cash larceny and payroll related fraud is nearly double the amount of reported cases over companies having more than 100 employees. Establishing good internal controls is essential to any business, large or small.

Off-Site Business Services now provides businesses a service that is a more secure and efficient way of paying bills

Each business has its own email address and fax number to upload bills or other documents while each member of the organization has a separate login to perform the duties the owner assigns to them.There is a complete and automatic audit trail for each transaction. And account information is completely hidden to prevent improperly mailed checks and reduce risk of information theft.

The system uses 256-bit encryption - just like a bank with data is backed up in multiple locations and encrypted. All vendor and bill information is synced with the customer's accounting software to eliminate double entry and then bills are automatically routed to designated approvers.

Once set up, an owner and their staff is either assigned a predefined role or customized roles can be created, depending on the business needs and the number of staff involved. There is unlimited data storage included in the monthly fee. If a business chooses to upload and have Off-Site Business Services process the payments, the fee is per document processed.

Bills can be approved for payment from an office or directly from a Smartphone or Tablet. There is no longer the need to leave signed checks in the office to pay bills while on vacation.

Cost for the program is based on the number of bills paid per month. Off Site Business Services has a unique login webpage set up through Bill.com specifically for clients who wish to utilize Off-Site to pay their bills.

For more information, call 877-966-4441.

Preserve, identify, retain

Employers and HR professionals hear it all the time: You must be prepared to preserve relevant corporate information and data and produce it if you are sued. New federal court rules mandate it, as do numerous state and federal court rulings. And rightly so!

If you're involved in litigation and can't produce such information, you'll probably suffer very real adverse consequences-most notably the imposition of extreme monetary penalties.

In the discovery phase of most litigation, opposing attorneys routinely request hard-copy records and electronically stored information for possible use as evidence. The records can involve all kinds of company documents, financial statements, business records, personnel files, project plans and other information.

Executives, administrators, managers, HR specialists and anyone else responsible for records and data must take every reasonable step to preserve it and ensure that all relevant information (and its sources) is identified and retained on a continuing basis.

Most "litigation hold" and data-preservation rules focus on ensuring that relevant, non-privileged material can be produced during discovery to an opposing party. However, having sound preservation and retention practices can benefit you, too-by making it far easier for you to gather evidence that will support your defense.

You can take some preparatory steps to ensure that you can comply with inevitable litigation holds and that you're proficiently primed to assist your attorneys should litigation occur. This list of 22 to-do's can guide your document and data preservation and retention procedures:

Read more here.