Should You Give Your Personal Assistant Access to Bank Accounts?

[Jasz]

A personal assistant is someone who can handle all of the tasks that you need done, so you don't have to. They take care of your day-to-day needs, like scheduling appointments and keeping track of your calendar, so you can get occupied with other things. It's also great when they're able to handle tasks like creating spreadsheets and handling your financial transactions and making sure that you get to your appointments on time.

However, we have seen or heard of cases where there was mismanagement of funds. Some even go as far as taking all the fund thereby running down the business. If you have to, before giving a staff member access to your bank accounts, it's important to make sure that they meet the qualifications for being a personal assistant:

• They must be financially savvy: A person who does not know how to manage money is probably not the best person for the job! Make sure that your personal assistant knows how to safely store and manage money.
• They must keep all information confidential: Any information about your finances should be kept secret.
• Be sure they are not greedy.
• They must be trustworthy and highly disciplined.

Personal assistants are valuable assets to their employers, and have a vital role to play in the organization especially when the employee is away, nevertheless I feel granting them total access to company's bank accounts is very risky.

 

[eldavis]

There is no specific answer to these question cause I feel it depends on you and how well you know and trust your personal assistant. Back then while I was in school, I was a personal assistant to one of the head of department and I had access to his arm cards, I knew his password and all those while, I never for once touched his money or try to take cheat him. I have also heard of cases where personal assistant steal from their bosses.

 

[Jasz]

@eldavis You are right! This question seems like the answer is based on personal decision. I would want to trust my personal assistant too having trusted him or her to have merited that position. notwithstanding, human desires are unlimited and change is constant. What if they changed in the long run?

My boss used to work in a company which was where he started his career. His boss trusted his personal assistant, a lady that he granted her access to the bank accounts, signatories, and all sort. This woman took off with all the money. don't know how she pulled that off with the bank. The boss took loan from the bank before the incident, a huge amount. So they eventually came for it, the company and the remaining assets were confiscated due to inability to pay back. My boss and most of the workers lost almost all their salaries and entitlements in the company , because they had a kind of joint account where the workers can save their money and get it anytime they wanted. My boss couldnt sue the company, so he left with nothing. The business is still closed down today.

 

[Richee84]

Personal assistance must be a person that we can truly trust and can handle confidential matter for his or her boss. Most at time person tend to choose their family member or close relative to be their personal assistance due to the information and task the person will be involve in for the company. Now letting your personal assistance to have access to ur company or personal account is a thing of the person choice and the relationship that exist between both of you. In a situation where a company owner employ his son or daughter as his personal assistance the boss will be free to free access of his account to his son or daughter who is also his personal assistance but when the personal assistance is an outsider who do not have any close relationship with his or her boss then it will be a little bit difficult to give a stranger access to the personal because the level of trust might not be there and the fear of been betray and disappeared with the payment. But there are also some instances where the personal assistance have proving to be trust worthy and have been test and proven to be of a good character.

 

[Ithedicious]

Knowing who we are dealing with is very important . We have to put that into consideration in every business we are starting and in most cases It will always advise that if we are to appoint a personal assistance into our business , this should really be someone that we trust to a point that the person won't disappoint us or possibly it should rather be a family member. At least here there is that strong relationship that the person might not likely harm you.

Some people are really wicked and I do not trust so many people accept people I have worked with and I also understand their character. Those are the people I trust a little because I have been with them and I know who they are and what they can do . But that does not really mean that they are not likely to change in most cases , people can actually change from bad to evil and also the other way around.

Even if you have to appoint a trusted person into your business as a personal assistant , the person must be able to keep accurate record of everything that is going on in the business as much as possible .