Upcoming Quickbooks Online Banking Presentation

      I’ll be the guest speaker at the Ventura County QuickBooks Group meeting on February 10, 2010 at 7 PM. My presentation will cover using Quickbook’s online banking features. If you’d like more information or would like to join us that evening, please visit http://www.meetup.com/venturacountyquickbooks/calendar/12316821/ for more info

      If you’re currently not using the online banking feature within Quickbooks, you should really take a look at this option. Downloading bank account and credit card transactions not results in improved productivity, but it has the added benefits of  better transaction detail and added security.

        On several occasions, I’ve found forged checks within a day or of their being cashed at a client’s bank. Downloaded transactions match up against transactions within Quickbooks. On these occasions, a check downloaded from the bank that wasn’t issued by the client. The client was able to take action quickly. Without online banking, the forged checks probably wouldn’t have been spotted until the following month, when they received their bank statement in the mail.

        

Protect Yourself from Fraud

I was the guest at a presentation given by City National Bank yesterday concerning fraud protection for businesses. One disturbing fact I learned concerned ACH debits and credits, which occur when a vendor debits directly from your checking or savings account electonically. These can be automatic monthly payments for your utility or credit card bill or when you pay a bill over the telephone.

By law (and I’m not sure if  it’s just California law  or federal law), a consumer has 60 days to dispute an ACH charge after it hits thier personal checking account. However, business account holders ONLY HAVE 24 HOURS to dispute an ACH charge.  This is extremely worrisome, as many of my clients don’t even have on-line access, let alone check their accounts daily.

City National Bank has a couple of Fraud Prevention services that help protect their business account holders. Their ACH Fraud Protection allows you to either block ACH debits & credits by your filters (specific vendors, web generated, etc) or just block all ACH transactions.

CNB has another service called Positive Pay. Using this service, clients upload their check register from accounting programs, such as Quickbooks, to the bank. The bank will authorize checks & debits from your register. Anything not listed on your register shows up on an exception report and you can tell the bank whether or not to process it.

I’m sure most major banks offer similar services. It might be a good time to give your bank a call and see what they have to offer…BEFORE you get hit with fraud! For more info on fraud prevention, you can visit CNB’s website at: www.cnb.com/fraudprevention.