Keep Your Business Assets Safe

In any business, it's imperative to keep all of your business assets and important documents safe. With a small business, it's even more critical because you don't yet have a built-in safety net. Here are some tips for keeping your business assets — including important documents, electronic records, keys, cash and safe — in the right hands.

Laptop Safes

Today, it would be almost impossible to run a business without a computer, and it’s a good bet that the details of your business are on your laptop. While laptops are light, portable and convenient, their portability makes them easy for strangers to walk away with. Consider investing in a small laptop safe for your business. When you’re out of the office, you can slip the laptop into its safe and not have to worry about losing any irreplaceable or sensitive business information.

Data Safes

You probably know how important it is to back up your business data, but if you’re like many small businesses you may not store your backup media off site. This practice could leave you vulnerable in the event of a fire, so it makes sense to store your precious data in a fireproof safe designed for secure electronic storage. Most safes designed for electronic storage are also waterproof; if there is a fire, you’re protected from damage due to sprinklers or fire hoses.

Data safes come in a variety of sizes and with varying degrees of fire resistance, so you can probably find one that exactly fits your needs. In fact, some safes are designed to handle data devices, documents and other valuables — so you can safeguard all of your important assets in a single safe.

Managing Cash

No business survives for long without a healthy cash position. Safeguarding cash can be difficult because it is highly desirable, easily portable and largely untraceable. If your business has many cash customers, you should set up a process for removing cash from accessible areas frequently during the course of the business day. Require hourly reconciliation and cash drops into a front-loading cash safe, for example. Post prominent signs that your till has limited cash and that employees can’t access the safe. This reduces the cash in the registers, so you and your employees are safer from robbery and it will help limit your loss if you are robbed.

Of course, you should set up your business systems with a strong segregation of duties in mind. Segregation of duties prevents fraud by requiring more than one person to provide approvals for a transaction involving funds. For example, with adequate segregation of duties, the person who enters supplier invoices should not be the person who creates supplier records and approves supplier invoices for payment. The resulting system of checks and balances helps prevent fraud or embezzlement.

Secure Your Premises

If your inventory is valuable, you may want to keep it under lock and key. Jewelry, consumer electronics and medications are all tempting targets. Consider installing locking display cases with shatterproof plastic rather than glass to protect your inventory. Of course you won’t want to hamper employees from making a sale, so you will need to make the keys readily available during business hours. A key safe behind the counters is a good storage idea that provides an extra measure of security. Some key safes also have space for cash, so you can lock up your startup cash and your display case keys in a single safe.

Limit the number of keys you hand out, and require that each employee return his/her keys to a locked key safe at the end of the shift. This ensures that you always know where the keys are and prevents employees from having unauthorized duplicates made.

Auto dealerships or car-rental franchisees will find large-capacity locking key safes invaluable. They not only make it hard for robbers posing as customers to steal keys, they help make it very visible if any keys are missing. This is helpful to prevent employees from accidentally going home with a set of keys. You wouldn’t want to lose a sale because the key to the vehicle was not on the premises. In addition, you can lock the key safe when closing so that all the keys — and all the vehicles they unlock — are safe for the night.

Your small business has many assets that need protecting, but there are a variety of cost-effective ways to keep your assets safe.