Years ago, I met a friend for lunch. She had been a successful and savvy business owner for years. So, I was surprised when she told me she had recently closed her business, and even more shocked when she explained why. A long-time employee had embezzled a lot of money, essentially bankrupting the company.
Several years later, the company I worked for convened a meeting of senior managers to reveal that someone in the accounting department had been embezzling money. We were not a small company, so while there wasn’t any danger of going out of business, it was quite disruptive.
Fraud is On the Rise
Too many small business owners believe they’re too small to be victims of fraud, but according to a guide from BILL, Solving the business challenges of 2025 with automation, fraud attempts are on the rise. Financial fraud complaints rose 10% from 2022 to 2023, with losses climbing 22% to more than $12.5 billion, according to data from the FBI.
Small businesses are particularly vulnerable to financial fraud due to the challenges of finding and retaining trustworthy employees. According to BILL’s Solving the business challenges of 2025 with automation, 58% of SMBs say, “attracting qualified staff” was challenging last year, and 60% had concerns about the availability of skilled talent—and 40% experienced employee retention issues.
Finance Automation to the Rescue
You can take steps now to avoid becoming a victim of fraud. Start by reviewing your existing security protocols and making sure people can’t bypass them. If you’re still using manual processes, you should immediately implement finance automation tools and establish new protocols.
BILL has some suggestions on how you can do this:
- Add automation: Adding finance automation can prevent employees from bypassing your security measures, regardless of their intentions (sometimes, staff members are tempted to do this when they become busy). Automation adds approval requirements to safeguard the system.
- Guard against BEC: Business Email Compromise (BEC) is one of the most common types of business fraud. The FBI defines BEC as when a cybercrook “sends an email message that appears to come from a known source, such as your bank or vendors, making a legitimate request.” Using BILL’s AP automation, your staff can’t change banking information or send payments without approvals.
- Customize workflows: To ensure employees get the correct approvals, BILL’s AP Automation software enables you to customize your workflows to meet your compliance requirements.
BILL has some additional suggestions you can find here in BILL’s Solving the business challenges of 2025 with automation.
Solving SMB Challenges
Preventing fraud is just one way financial automation can help your small business. I’m excited to partner with BILL to share more information and resources for SMBs, so you can run a more efficient (BILL users report saving an average of 12 hours a month) and profitable (BILL users report saving over $10,000 a month) business. Automating your finance processes also gives you peace of mind—98% of customers feel their AP is more secure with BILL.
Have you ever faced fraud in your small business? How did you deal with it? Let me know.
Next week, we’ll meet an SMB owner who uses BILL to make their company more efficient.
Rieva Lesonsky is President of Small Business Currents, LLC, a content company focusing on small businesses and entrepreneurship. You can find her on Twitter @Rieva, Bluesky @Rieva.bsky.social, and LinkedIn. Or email her at Rieva@SmallBusinessCurrents.com.
Photo courtesy Allison Saeng for Unsplash+
