Question for employers - would you do this?

OhReally_2

Percy1983 wrote: »

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

You'll never stop criminals intent on breaking the law

Mistral001

Perhaps this is one for the relationships forum. I would like to answer this question, but you know the old saying of not coming between a man and wife or a woman and her husband.

pelirocco

Strictly speaking only the person with the log in details should be making payments , its on of the T&c's to online banking .
As a business owner I wouldnt let any staff have that amount of access ( I have one exception , my daughter works with me and she has access to check the account when i am away , and to make any 'emergency@ payments.

If your husband is there to log in he may as well make the payments . As an aside its not difficult to make incorrect payments by accident so the employee puts him/herself at risk there

About 15 odd years ago a local company to us put their trust in their book keeper she did all the payments , it wsnt until she was away on holiday that tey found out she had been skimming tens of thousands of £'s , she was pretty skilled at it tho , taking out loans , falsifying invoices and even ( apparently) falsifying bank statements ..although I suspect the owner didnt do much checking

AbbieCadabra

that post just reminded me, we knew someone who had worked for the same small company for years, probably 15+, great friends with the owner & his wife/family, spent time together out of work - she was skimming money out of the business all that time, started off with small amounts but totalled £xx,000's over the years. nobody could believe it, think she'd got gambling debts & had just got used to living beyond her means on 'free money', never thought she would be caught. i think that happened when she was on holiday too.

scary!

DKLS

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

No but the point still stands, wether its a two man business or a international corporate, you need the appropriate checks and balances in place to protect yourself.
Its easier to stop money going missing rather than trying to recover it once its gone.

Opinion

No. Never. Never ever.

Savvy_Sue

Suarez wrote: »

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?

Can you? When I asked about online banking for a small club I help with, they said we'd have to go back to sole signatory on cheques etc, and I wasn't prepared to do that!

DigForVictory wrote: »

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

Absolutely!

DigForVictory wrote: »

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.

Or change banks to one which will let you have another online banking person, or requires dual authority, ie someone says 'pay this bill' and someone else then logs in and says 'Oh, OK!'

dandy-candy

Thanks for so many replies, it's really good to get other peoples opinions on this. I'm going to suggest to DH he brings the bills home from now on and we can pay them online in the evening. I just wanted to make sure I wasn't being over cautious!

Suarez

Savvy_Sue wrote: »

Can you? When I asked about online banking for a small club I help with, they said we'd have to go back to sole signatory on cheques etc, and I wasn't prepared to do that!

Yes we have 2 administrators and 2 owner logins that can approve the payments.

Slinky

It's easy to make mistakes, push the wrong button and whoosh it's gone. I had details of a customer's bank account saved on my system where I'd given him a refund. One day I clicked on his account rather than the next one down and sent him £1000 by mistake. Fortunately a phone call to my customer and 10 minutes later it was back in my account, but I wouldn't wanted to have been an employee making that mistake with the bosses money if the customer hadn't been so honest.