Jen: This is the PKF Texas Entrepreneur’s Playbook. I’m Jen Lemanski, and I’m back again with Danielle Supkis Cheek, one of the faces of our fraud and forensics team. Danielle, welcome back to the Playbook.
Danielle: Thank you again for having me.
Jen: So, I’ve heard a little bit about treasury management. What do you do in that space, and what does that look like?
Danielle: Treasury management is just a fancy word for “banking services.” You’ll be able to reach out to your banker and find out what treasury management services they have, but it’s kind of the services that the bank offers you as a business customer typically.
One of the things that we see with our clients is that there’s so much fraud with their banking systems right now, because the internal controls at a company allow people to prey on their funds. And the controls related to what you get as a business bank account versus an individual bank account, there’s not as many consumer protection laws that cover a business bank account, so the treasury management features help you bridge that gap. You know, an individual if they have a fraud on their credit card or a fraud on their bank account, they just call up the bank, the bank says, “Oh, yes, yeah, I see. We will refund your account.” That doesn’t work the same on a business bank account, and if the money’s gone, the money’s gone, usually on a business bank account.
So, what we’ve been seeing is companies in good times accumulate a fair amount of cash. You know, they’re pretty conservative, because they’ve seen some worse times and are trying to, you know, stay fairly cash heavy sometimes.
Jen: Sure.
Danielle: And if they’re not protecting that cash and they have a business email compromise where somebody says, “Hey, I’m your boss. Please send me the money,” and somebody actually does it, that means:
- they’re not having the internal controls that would have prevented that from happening, but
- they’re not putting in place some certain treasury management features that could help protect that
Jen: Okay.
Danielle: And so, it’s a really good plan to start working with your bankers on a more active and proactive way to figure out what services can you get. It’s a great way to add layers of segregation of duties and controls when you don’t have a ton of money or ton of staff to have a large-scale program. And yes, there’s fees associated with it, but when you talk about the comparison is bringing on extra people in office, the fees of, you know, 30, 50, 100 dollars a month, they’re really not that bad compared to somebody’s salary.
So, it’s really good to get your banker talking to your, mainly if you have, an internal controls person in the office or your CPA on how do you actually make sure you can mitigate some of these risks of losing a lot of money due to fraud.
Jen: That’s really important, especially to small business where every penny really counts
Danielle: Yes.
Jen: Perfect. Well, we’ll get you back to talk a little bit more about some fraud topics soon.
Danielle: Of course.
Jen: For more information about PKF Texas’s fraud services, visit www.pkftexas.com/Forensics. This has been another thought leader production brought to you by PKF Texas the Entrepreneur’s Playbook. Tune in next week for another chapter.