Are your staff playing hide and seek with your finances?

Stuart Scanlon, MD, epic ERP

The perpetrators of fraudulent financial activities can be anyone in your organisation who has privileged access to your finances – from payment clerks to financial directors. A good ERP system will help you to sniff out any shenanigans going on with your company’s finances in no time and allow you to bring the perpetrators to book. 

In our line of business – which is implementing ERP systems that generate a bird’s eye view of everything that’s going on in your organisation – we often unearth the most brazen fraud. And it happens at all levels of the company. Fraud is particularly rife when one person has unfettered and sole access to view and carry out transactions on the company’s behalf.

I urge business owners to think about their access to information – especially financial information – and interrogate the level of visibility they have over the everyday indicators throughout their organisations.

It’s not necessary for business owners to know about each and every payment or invoice that gets issued by the company, but they should at least have a handle on the major indicators of a business’s financial health – and a good ERP system will help to generate these indicators and put in the necessary controls.

Ask yourself the following questions:

• Does anyone specific (even your FD) hold all the power? 
• Do you have full visibility over your financials whenever you want it?
• Can you access your financials?
• Does your finance department operate as a silo or separate entity?
• Is your business dealing extensively in cash payments? And are these controlled by one particular person?
• Do you know how many cash payments you are making?
• Do you have an ERP system in place?

We often meet resistance to the installation of an ERP system by specific individuals in a business. The question we must ask is ‘what are they hiding?’ What is the real reason they don’t want a system that provides visibility, efficiency, and accuracy? Why are they holding your business back from implementing an ERP system?

If implemented properly, an effective ERP system pays for itself in a relatively short period of time. And in return for your initial investment, you get complete control over all your own processes!

Having systems in place that ensure visibility and efficiency can save your business more than you would spend on the solution. It also ensures your financials are accurate and that you don’t end up under-declaring to the tax man or missing payments and having to fork over late payment penalties.

When orders are coming in, but your cash flow is low, your ERP system will raise a flag. It is also able to forecast cash flow based on your invoicing and supplier or customer terms and will tell you when you are over-extended.

So, if you have an individual who is reluctant to implement an ERP system in your organisation, ask yourself why? What have they got to hide? And, more importantly, what is it already costing you?!

For more information visit https://www.epicerp.co.za/.