Keep your small business safe with these helpful tips.

First and foremost, make sure your employees are trustworthy. Thorough background checks are the first step in the pursuit of fraud safety. Verify potential employees' educational, professional, and personal references. If you are in a business where the employees will be handling company assets, you might consider running credit checks, too.

Enroll in eStatements and download our mobile app to make it even easier to monitor your account activity frequently. The sooner you catch fraud, the better. Centralize your payroll to minimize the margin of error.

Make sure you protect your accounting documents, such as your check stock and your invoices. Keep these under lock and key at all times. Regarding checks, use dual control policies for writing them. This means that the person writing the checks isn’t the same person that reconciles your books.

Keep track of your vendors and routinely check your vendor lists to make sure they are known and have all of their information listed, i.e. physical address, phone numbers, etc. Conduct unannounced checks on your business to see how things are performing on the day-to-day functions.

Create a clear and strict fraud policy that is in place and make sure all employees are aware of it. It should state explicitly what the policies are on employee conduct, what is not allowed, and what the consequences are for fraudulent crimes and behaviors. Ensure that your employees are all trained in fraud prevention themselves. It is also a good policy to make each employee take a 5-day vacation each year at least once.

Running a business is challenging in many ways, but worrying about fraud shouldn’t be one of them. Follow these guidelines to help keep your business safe from fraud.