Maureen Costello
Wholesale Distributor

Could you comment on the importance of accounting and internal controls in a growing business?

I think it is always good to start out with good internal control systems that way you know is going on in your business. And internal controls what it really means is that you have closed the loop holes so that assets can't bleed out your door. If you're talking about accounting internal controls a lot of time you're talking about cash management, cash handling which means you have a situation where one person does something, someone else checks it so that no one person is in a position to have access to assets and to be quite honestly to be able to walk off them without you knowing it. But there are other things that relate to internal controls that in an operation as opposed to just accounting especially in a retail store or warehouse. There are a lot of other things that can just walk out your door if employees feel that they have permission to take them. If you are operating a retail food store or restaurant you may very well may have employees that who feel that because that you provide their lunch or you let them drink all the coffee they want that means--Hey if I feel like taking a packet of coffee home I can do that too. So part of that is that you establish rules. You let people know where the boundaries are. But you also need to have some methodology for verifying that what you want to have happen is happening and I they always say what you measure gets done. If people know there are systems to make sure that everything is being done properly there's a tendency for them to go by the rules and you don't have the problems. It's much better to set up systems that prevent employees from engaging in behaviors that are going to cause you to want to fire them than it is to have to deal with the aftermath of somebody stealing from you and then you have deal with it.