General Consultant Discussion

As a long timer in the business world, I always feel that some of my clients would fare better with new management. I am sure everyone has a client or two that comes to mind. As an auditor back in the day, I participated in a couple fraud audits. At the root of all of them was an employee with too much access to cash with too little oversight. One of my MAS clients stiffed me a couple years back when they discovered their office manager diverted a half mill to her bank account. Everytime I would try to get them to use MAS more efficiently, they either were too busy or too slow without any money. Now this newspaper article caught my eye. Little Dixon Illinois. For 15 years, I drove by it on the Illinois toll road. Boyhood home of Dutch Reagan. http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/chi-dixon-sues-auditors-in-53-million-rita-crundwell-embezzlement-case-20120611,0,7607018.story $53MM is a LOT of money. 20 years is a long time! I would like to be a fly on the wall at CliftonLarsonAllen (formerly Glifton Gunderson) as the partners try to figure out who to blame......

Nobody pays attention until they are up the creek. Then let the blame begin...

I was just talking to a small client the other day. About 7 years ago, he had called us up in a panic on a Monday morning. Over the weekend, his long-time employee who did all the book work -- cash receipts, invoicing, checks, etc. had died. That was bad enough, but he didn't know how to use MAS 90. So I had to go in and do some quick basic training. Then later as he went through things and got the books in order he discovered that she had been stealing from the company. She hardly ever took a vacation -- it might be a day here or there. Dedicated employee or fraudster?

Sadly, way too many small business owners do not understand the meaning of ""controller"" in the larger sense. And, they never bother to take an in accounting or ""running your business"" class at the local community college. My (and ours!) challenge in my business is figuring out how to get the attention of these owners in a good way. It is really tough to get out the pigeonhole as the ""MAS Guy"" or the ""CRM Guy."" There is gold there when we do it, though.