Tips for avoiding hassled

• Keep your cheques in a restricted area.

• Regularly check the numerical sequence to ensure that all cheques are in your possession.

• When your cheques are signed, don’t delay putting them in the mail; avoid having your cheques under the eyes and reach of anyone. Most cheque frauds occur on company premises.

• Check your disbursements daily (online via the Internet) to make sure that payees do not delay cashing the payments.

• Upon receiving your bank statement, perform your bank reconciliation by amount and by NAME. Most cases of cheque counterfeiting reveal that only the name has been changed; consequently, you do not see that forgery. Loan conventions between banks and their customers specify that there is a short time limit for declaring cases of fraud. At the expiration of this time limit, you find yourself in a high-risk situation; in some cases, banks have not reimbursed their customers.

• Never sign a blank cheque. “The boss will be away and we will need a few cheques.” Imagine if you were to be the victim of a theft of cheques and that your authentic signature is on them...

• Entrust the handling of your cheques to only one person or to as few people as possible. “Jean prints the blank cheques… Beatrice signs them… Jean files the stubs with the vouchers… Sophie inserts them into envelopes…Finally, Peter the errand boy, drops them in the mailbox.” Just too many people are handling these cheques.