Question for employers - would you do this?

dandy-candy

I would like some opinions from employers please as I don't know if this is a good idea or not.
DH has a shop and employs one member of staff. DH is doing outside work most of the time while his employee hold the fort. He has only recently progressed to using online banking and he get his employee to pay the bills for him. DH logs on to the business bank account and then gets the guy who works with him to pay the bills online.
I think this is a bad idea, but DH says he can't do anything iffy as DH could check easily, but it still doesn't seem right to me. Would you (or do you) do this?

Suarez

I know with Natwest you can set administrators up on the bank so the employee would have a login, process any bills and transactions then your husband could login with his profile to approve the payments.

It might be worth asking your bank if they do anything similar?

Takeaway_Addict

If it is just him and the employee then No I wouldn't because yes whilst your OH would find out how quick would it take to clear the money out, gamble it all etc....not long at all!

Your DH needs to move to paying bills at the end of the following month of invoice as a standard, this way its all done within a morning and easier to control

Atidi

dandy-candy wrote: »

I would like some opinions from employers please as I don't know if this is a good idea or not.
DH has a shop and employs one member of staff. DH is doing outside work most of the time while his employee hold the fort. He has only recently progressed to using online banking and he get his employee to pay the bills for him. DH logs on to the business bank account and then gets the guy who works with him to pay the bills online.
I think this is a bad idea, but DH says he can't do anything iffy as DH could check easily, but it still doesn't seem right to me. Would you (or do you) do this?

Sounds like he is at least operating in breach of his agreement with the bank by allowing others to access the bank account using his logon & password.

Why doesn't he contact the bank and request that the employee is provided with their own access (assuming he cannot create secondary users himself)

AbbieCadabra

Takeaway_Addict wrote: »

Your DH needs to move to paying bills at the end of the following month of invoice as a standard, this way its all done within a morning and easier to control

agreed, just one payment run once a month, shouldn't take too long to do. takes me all of 15 mins & that's with sending an email remittance to each supplier. even if he has to do weekly payments for some reason, it still shouldn't be too time consuming.

how many transactions are you talking about? if it is that many, then he's probably best to set up authorisation at the bank so he has final control. if only a few, he might as well be doing them himself.

no matter how well you think you know someone, you just don't. giving an employee full access to the bank account (on his user info? big no no i'd have thought & you wouldn't be covered if anything did go wrong) with no checks/authorisation in place would put a lot of temptation in front of someone.

DigForVictory

It isn't kind, it isn't fair & it isn't safe. For either party.

Talk to the bank about setting it up coherently and safely, or book a day off to do the bank run, but this halfway delegation is imprudent.

Percy1983

I will say in a previous job I had the access rights to pay anything upto 5 million, as an employee I was setup and ready to go so I could have been over the border before anybody noticed.

As it is I never did anything dodgy but made the recommendation that it was changed, I have no idea if they have changed it.

In short if you trust the right people it won't be a problem, the problem is selecting the right people.

DKLS

Never a good idea, unless the bank can impose some level of admin and a limit to payments. Where ever I have worked, I have been able to sign off to a certain amount, anything more needs multiple sign offs.

A friend worked at this company where a guy fiddled a huge amount of money, 19 million, entirely due to the very lax financial controls.

OhReally_2

DKLS wrote: »

A friend worked at this company where a guy fiddled a huge amount of money, 19 million, entirely due to the very lax financial controls.

The OP is talking about a 2 man business (1 in the shop & 1 in the field), not "one of the world’s largest companies"

I doubt the business even has £19m, but if it does, I'm sure the owner won't need financial controls to spot if it ever went missing

Percy1983

OhReally wrote: »

The OP is talking about a 2 man business (1 in the shop & 1 in the field), not "one of the world’s largest companies"

I doubt the business even has £19m, but if it does, I'm sure the owner won't need financial controls to spot if it ever went missing

It is better to stop it going missing rather than spot it after the event.

whitewing

I would say that you have a duty of care to the employee, which may well include not putting temptation in his way.

I think it is a ridiculous idea.

Even if the employee is entirely honest, what if they get a scam invoice requesting money which they then pay unwittingly. Tell your DH not to delegate his financial responsibilities without proper safeguards.