Friday 29 January 2010

It Pays To Pay Attention To All Accounts Online

We had a mysterious branch to branch transfer of funds out of our business account on January 20th.

Now, if we were not into our accounts on a daily basis, we may not have caught the transaction until the bookkeeper updated our books.

But, we do check our accounts regularly just because.

Well, we saw the transaction, called the bookkeeper, and ran through all of the transactions we did that day and could not find any reference to the several thousand dollar transaction.

Yes, _several thousand dollars_!

In order to get the situation resolved, the only resort we had was to call the bank and ask them What the Chicken (previous blog post) was going on?!?

They in turn put a “trace” on the transaction. Well, here we are a little over a week later and the money has been credited back into our account.

The bank representative that we spoke to today said that the funds were “accidentally” pulled from our account.

So, if we did not do our own due diligence, the banking representative indicated that the bank’s internal auditing system would have picked up on the mistake . . . at some point.

In the mean time, we were unable to utilize those funds if and when they were needed.

No matter how digital we go with everything, we still need to pay close attention to what we do with our personal identity online and pay very close attention to our bank accounts and credit cards online.

No system is foolproof, and no system is exempt from “Garbage in ---> Garbage Out” (Wikipedia).

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists
Co-Author: SBS 2008 Blueprint Book

*Our original iMac was stolen (previous blog post). We now have a new MacBook Pro courtesy of Vlad Mazek, owner of OWN.

Windows Live Writer

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