"The incidents of Internet fraud could have been identified earlier by Internet banking clients if they had used EconoAccounting," says Keith Levenstein, developer and publisher of EconoAccounting, the SMME accounting software.
"To avoid becoming a victim a user should regularly check his bank statement - every day if possible. If he sees an unauthorised transaction it is easier to trace and stop than if he waited for his bank statement at the end of the month.
"One of the problems of checking a bank statement is that with many transactions on a page it is sometimes easy to miss that one extra unauthorised transaction.
"Since EconoAccounting has the ability to import a downloaded bank statement, the software helps users identify all suspect transactions," Levenstein explained.
The software analyses each description of each transaction on the bank statement, and allocates the expense accordingly. Where there is an unauthorised transaction, the software will not be able to allocate it and will instantly flag it for the user`s attention. He will far more easily be able to find out what the transaction is and his bank can trace it if necessary.
"Fraudsters do not only steal passwords and PIN numbers. More often than not they use other methods to transfer money out of your account. They may try to send a debit order through your account. The all too common crime is to deduct extra charges from your credit card account. Keeping your PIN safe is no protection against this. The only approach is to know at all times how much money is in your bank and what every transaction means. Many people do not check their bank statement and credit card statements sufficiently and do not pick up that extra R450 being deducted on their account.
"We recently had an interesting case study. As soon as one of our clients started using EconoAccounting she discovered a foreign Internet charge on her bank statement, because the software flagged it as needing allocation. On importing her downloaded bank statements for the past year, and doing a simple ledger query she discovered the same unauthorised transaction had been going through her account for the past five months without her noticing it. It is not surprising or uncommon to find many strange transactions that were not picked up by the client reading through their bank statement. The statement is sometimes difficult to read, and frankly it gets boring reading a bank statement, so it is difficult to pick up that one in 500 transactions that defrauds you of R450. Without EconoAccounting she would still be paying out money!"
The advice to all users of Internet banking is therefore:
1. Avoid viruses by using good, up to date anti-virus software.
2. Do not open e-mail with attachments without scanning first. Do not run a program your friend sent you!
3. Do not help perpetuate hoax viruses. Bill Gates is NOT going to give you a free trip to Disneyland if you forward this message to everyone in your address book!
4. Check your bank account regularly.
5. Analyse the bank statement for unusual looking transactions.
6. Keep you accounts up to date so you know exactly what payments you need to make and what payments you have made.
"Many accounting systems rely on either capturing transactions off a cheque book or typing up transactions from the bank statement once it is received by post each month. This is too long to wait when dealing with unauthorised transactions. However, since EconoAccounting imports live bank statements and analyses the transactions that you have downloaded, it focuses your mind on the issues at hand and encourages you to logon to your Internet banking every day.
"We have found that by spending less than five minutes per day, including logging onto Internet banking and downloading bank and credit card statements, a small business/individual user can use EconoAccounting to manage their accounts, including invoicing and debtors, instantly produce audit ready financial statements and reduce the threat of banking fraud," concludes Levenstein.
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