How Secure is Your System

The right accounting software can prevent security headaches and ensure the accuracy and integrity of your data.

Security and fraud prevention are hot topics right now, and for good reason. Small businesses can get into trouble if their systems don't offer security features and controls for fraud prevention—basic accounting isn't enough anymore.

Research has shown that small businesses are often more vulnerable to fraud than their larger counterparts because they have fewer employees. Moreover, because small companies tend to develop closer relationships and trust between owners and their employees, they might be less suspicious and thus more susceptible to employee fraud. Technology can and should assist you in ensuring that your customer information stays safe.

How secure do you think your current system is? Here are a few ways Sage 50 Accounting helps you safeguard your financial information:

Security

One of the best defenses against fraud in small businesses is to use the robust role based security features in Sage 50 Accounting to restrict access to sensitive financial data. Sage 50 Accounting allows you to create user profiles for each person, requiring a user name and password in order to access sensitive company data.

Audit Trail

The Sage 50 Accounting full time audit trail helps provide more accountability and deters users from fraudulent activity or mistakes, and tracks transaction history. This feature also logs when a person enters data, edits existing data, or removes data.

Account Reconciliation

A fundamental practice in the effort to detect fraudulent activity is regular, thorough account reconciliation. The Sage 50 Accounting account reconciliation tool makes reconciliation of any general ledger account easy. Sage 50 Accounting users makes the process even easier by electronically importing statements from your bank.

Backup and Restore

We recommend you backup company data on a regular basis and store those backups in a separate, secure location. Besides being an essential safeguard against potential errors and data corruption, data backups can be restored if fraudulent activity is suspected. Backups are also useful for auditing purposes. For example, you can restore a backup that was made prior to closing a fiscal year to examine detailed transaction history. Sage 50 Accounting product options offer backup for financial history from 2 to 100 years. You can now easily protect your critical information against hardware failures and catastrophic events.

Fraud, by nature, is hidden. Therefore, there is no guaranteed way to avoid it. Nevertheless, it's important for businesses of any size to take employee fraud seriously and implement deterrents to help prevent and identify fraud as quickly as possible.

Now is a great time to do an inventory of your own system's capabilities. If you're currently not using a system that offers these capabilities, it may be time to change. Recognizing the importance of tracking and protecting your assets and ensuring that you are equipped to manage them puts you ahead of the game!

Please Note: Features and functionality vary by product. For a more specific overview of the Sage 50 Accounting product line, please visit na.sage.com/sage-50-accounting-ca

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