{"id":3761,"date":"2019-11-15T11:43:27","date_gmt":"2019-11-15T11:43:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.tofler.in\/blog\/?p=3761"},"modified":"2020-04-10T11:11:37","modified_gmt":"2020-04-10T11:11:37","slug":"how-3-simple-vendor-checks-helped-me-avoid-fraud","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tofler.in\/blog\/how-3-simple-vendor-checks-helped-me-avoid-fraud\/","title":{"rendered":"How 3 simple vendor checks helped me avoid fraud"},"content":{"rendered":"

Some of us evaluate a vendor before entering into a transaction. Some of us don’t. Many times it is difficult to get any useful information on that vendor. Things work by word of mouth until they go bad.\u00a0Broadly speaking, vendor onboarding is the process of verifying and assessing a vendor\/supplier to suit your organization\u2019s eligibility requirements. Why is it ever done? You would know why, if, you have ever faced a vendor fraud. If you haven\u2019t yet, may be my recent experience will help you understand.<\/p>\n

My story<\/u>:
\nI recently shifted to Bombay to set up next Tofler\u2019s office. I was searching for suppliers that could help transit\u00a0some stuff.\u00a0Aggarwal Packers and Movers was definitely an option but was turning out expensive.<\/p>\n

So, after looking at alternatives in Google, I nearly finalised a deal with one company. It had an impresive website, quick response time\u00a0and\u00a0happy reviews. Before going ahead, I ran up 3 simple checks on the company:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Incorporation date<\/strong>: The company was incorporated 2 years back. Now that was a bit of a red flag. Mouthshut had some 1500 reviews on the company. How could there be 1500 reviews in 2 years of starting up? Other similar companies had about 400-500 reviews and they started much earlier.<\/li>\n
  2. Registration details<\/strong><\/a>: Looked at the company\u2019s\u00a0address, charges, capital<\/strong>\u00a0etc \u2013 nothing alarming. All details matched with that on website and as communicated by the compant to me.<\/li>\n
  3. Directors and other directorships:\u00a0<\/strong>\u00a0Then I started looking at directors\u00a0of the company and their other directorships. This is where the problem appeared. The directors of this logistics vendor had directorships in 50 other companies. Most of the companies were \u2018strike off<\/a>\u2019. Most of them were recently incorporated and then shut down. Of those which were \u2018Active\u2019 companies, many of them were non-compliant and hadn\u2019t filed recent financials. This definitely doesn\u2019t say right about the supplier. Questions the integrity and fraudulent intention. Wouldn’t you agree? Then the reason for so many mouthshut reviews clicked me \u2013 they were all fake and bought reviews! And that\u2019s why they all said good about the company.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    The point being<\/u>
    \nThis ofcourse is a small example of how simple checks on a business could help. But\u00a0my point is that even in such a small transaction, it was helpful. Then why miss it in a bigger transaction? I have often come across suspicious businesses that could be discovered by an apparent look. The problem is that we don\u2019t look at all.<\/p>\n

    Just start with a basic process<\/u>\u00a0– Look at registration details, financial highlights, directors and connected companies.\u00a0This could go a long way to save trouble in the future.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Some of us evaluate a vendor before entering into a transaction. Some of us don’t. Many times it is difficult to get any useful information on that vendor. Things work by word of mouth until they go bad.\u00a0Broadly speaking, vendor onboarding is the process of verifying and assessing a vendor\/supplier to suit your organization\u2019s eligibility […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1586,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,217],"tags":[5,199],"class_list":["post-3761","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-indian-companies-best-practices","category-newsletter","tag-due-diligence","tag-vendor-onboarding"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tofler.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3761","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tofler.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tofler.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tofler.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tofler.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3761"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.tofler.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3761\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3775,"href":"https:\/\/www.tofler.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3761\/revisions\/3775"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tofler.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1586"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tofler.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3761"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tofler.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3761"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tofler.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3761"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}