#fraud-prevention
Fraud Prevention
Proactive strategies and controls to prevent financial fraud in your business
Bill-and-Hold Arrangements Under ASC 606: When You Can (and Can't) Recognize Revenue on Goods a Customer Hasn't Picked Up Yet
ASC 606 permits revenue recognition on bill-and-hold arrangements only when four criteria are all met — a substantive reason for the delay, goods segregated for the customer, readiness for immediate transfer, and no seller right to redirect them. This guide walks through each test, a worked allocation example splitting goods revenue from a separate storage obligation, legitimate use cases, and the seller-initiated-delay red flag that draws SEC scrutiny.
AI-Powered Fraud Detection for Small Businesses: Real-Time Auditing Without a Big-Four Budget
Business email compromise cost U.S. companies over $3 billion in 2025, averaging $137,000 per incident — and 45% of small businesses hit by BEC close within six months. AI-driven continuous auditing now starts around $20–$70/month; here's how anomaly detection, vendor account validation, and free controls like payment-change callbacks cut the risk without an enterprise fraud stack.
Cyber Insurance for Small Businesses: The Coverage Gaps That Blindside Owners
Only 38% of small businesses carry cyber insurance, 44% of insured ones are underinsured, and nearly half of claims are denied or closed without payment. A guide to the ransomware sublimits, social engineering caps, and security-control requirements that determine whether a policy actually pays.
Self-Storage Facility Bookkeeping: Why 'The Manager Deposited It' Isn't the Same as 'It's Reconciled'
How to keep accurate books for a self-storage facility — reconciling manager deposits against software batch reports, applying lien-sale proceeds (which recover roughly 39 cents on the dollar) against receivables instead of booking them as income, spreading annual property taxes across months, and tracking economic occupancy and RevPAF instead of raw occupancy.
Cyber Insurance for Small Businesses in 2026: What It Costs, What It Covers, and Where Claims Get Denied
Small business cyber insurance runs roughly $400–$1,600 a year for a $1 million limit, while the average breach recovery costs $120,000 and downtime $53,000 an hour. A guide to first-party vs. third-party coverage, 2026 premium drivers, and the social-engineering sublimits and MFA requirements that most often sink claims.
Laundromat Bookkeeping: Reconciling Coin and Card Revenue Against Utility Usage to Catch Shrinkage
Laundromat utilities run 20–25% of gross revenue, which makes water and gas meters a second independent ledger — convert metered consumption into an implied cycle count and revenue figure, compare it to coin-box counts, and a persistent gap over 5–8% flags theft, leaks, or miscalibrated machines. Includes a weekly-to-annual checklist covering multi-stream income accounts and Section 179 equipment expensing.
Your Auditor Will Soon Have to Prove Your Cash Actually Exists — Even If You Never See It
AICPA SAS No. 150, issued July 2026 and effective for periods ending on or after December 15, 2028, requires auditors to externally confirm cash held by third parties — payment processor reserves, PEO payroll trust accounts, and escrow balances — unless narrow risk-based conditions are met. Here is what changes for audited businesses and how to prepare your books.
Check Fraud Is Still the #1 Payment Threat in 2026 — Here's What to Do About It
The 2026 AFP Payments Fraud Survey found 76% of U.S. organizations faced payment fraud in 2025, with paper checks the top target at 58% — ahead of ACH debits (30%) and wires (25%). Here's a practical small-business defense checklist, from Positive Pay and ACH filters to callback verification and weekly reconciliation.
Friendly Fraud Is Now 75% of eCommerce Disputes: A Small Merchant's Guide to Fighting Chargebacks
Friendly fraud costs eCommerce merchants an estimated $132 billion a year and now accounts for roughly 75% of all disputes, yet merchants win only 8.1% of manually contested chargebacks. Here's how small merchants can prevent disputes, use Visa CE3.0 evidence, stay under the 1.5% VAMP ratio, and track the true cost in their books.
AI-Generated Fake Invoices Are Fooling Accounts Payable Teams — Here's How to Stop Them
Generative AI made vendor impersonation cheap: 76% of organizations faced payments fraud in 2025, and AI-generated fakes now drive 70.8% of expense-report fraud. Here are the controls that still work — out-of-band verification, dual authorization, vendor-file hygiene, and auditable books.
How a Trailer Manufacturer's Bankruptcy Shows What Happens When Nobody Is Watching the Books
A Georgia trailer manufacturer's 2026 Chapter 11 filing traces partly to alleged employee theft discovered in 2024. Businesses under 100 employees suffer a median fraud loss of $141,000 per ACFE data — here are the segregation-of-duties controls that catch theft early, and why an auditable ledger matters.
GAO's AI Report on the SBA: What Federal Contractors and SBIR Applicants Should Do Now
GAO report GAO-26-107828 found the SBA froze nearly all AI work in March 2025 and took six years to publish its legally required AI use-case inventory. Here's what AI-assisted market research, proposal screening, and fraud detection mean for federal contractors and SBIR/STTR awardees — and the records to keep now.