How To Avoid Expense Surprises At Tax Time

  When tax time arrives, it can be immensely stressful for small business owners and their financial accounting teams, particularly if mistakes have been made throughout the year, or if not enough thinking and planning have gone into what needs to be done for the federal tax return. Leaving things until the last minute is […]

4 Signs Of Employee Fraud, And What To Do About It

Many small business owners are too busy to spend time pouring over every petty cash receipt or employee credit card statement—you have bigger fish to fry. Of course you want to trust your employees, but the truth is that workers can unknowingly or knowingly take liberties (aka steal). It may be small amounts—an extra cup […]

The 7 rules of good expense management

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Effective expense management is crucial for small businesses. Without good expense management systems, companies will see ballooning costs and reduced profits. Some will fail. Business owners must have strong expense management procedures and policies in place. We have identified seven rules of expense management that all businesses should understand. Rule 1: Communicate with your employees […]

How Bento Uses Bento for Stopping Fraud

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One of the strangest things about working in the finance industry is finding out just how many people attempt fraud. Our new accounts team is constantly looking at applications to ensure that applicants are who they say they are (and engaged in a legitimate business), while our engineering team works hard to keep our systems […]

All The Queen’s Horses and Preventing Fraud

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A movie review may seem like a strange thing to have on our blog, but this movie is a good one. It’s about preventing fraud. The movie is is All The Queen’s Horses, the story of what is believed to be the largest municipal fraud in the United States. Rita Crundwell served as the treasurer […]

Managing Expenses for Business Success

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Many of our customers find us because they are looking for a better way to manage expenses for business success. They know that they need to spend money to grow, and they want to do it the right way. A key benefit of using Bento for Business cards is that our customers can limit who […]

Fraud Alert: 10 Ways You’re Making it Easier for Employees to Steal from You

Whether or not you’ve stopped to think about it, small businesses are more vulnerable to internal fraud than their larger counterparts. This is because small businesses… Typically don’t have a budget for fraud detection. Rarely have official policies in place for handling funds, checks, reimbursements, and bills. Often rely on trust rather than clearly defined […]

5 Fraud Prevention Strategies for Small Businesses on a Budget

Preventing fraud may not be top-of-mind for most small-business owners, but accounting professionals understand that fraud is a real – and potentially costly – risk. In fact, the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE) found in 2016 that the median fraud loss at businesses with fewer than 100 employees is $150,000 – the same as it is for […]

10 Tips to Reduce Construction Employee Fraud

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Employee theft isn’t very common, but it’s good to have some sort of plan to prevent it or deal with it once it’s happened. The best defense is of course having good, trustworthy employees. However, larger companies have a harder time getting to know all of their employees. If you do happen to have any […]