09/02/2026
Today I made a dumb mistake. I was driving my motorcycle down near Cedar City. It was windy, enough to push the bike nearly into the other lane. No problems there. I’m an experienced rider and can compensate for wind.
What I can’t compensate for is not zipping my jacket pocket… the pocket where I keep my wallet. I started to feel it slipping, and by some form of grace my panier caught it right on the spine. I quickly grabbed it and managed to get the bike safely off the shoulder. The wallet survived along with my ID and my credit cards, so there were no cancellations to perform. What didn’t survive was the $160 in cash inside. I walked a quarter mile up the side of the freeway (also not smart) to no avail. So if anyone happens to be passing south of Cedar and a Benjamin lands on your windshield, dinner was on me.
Now what does this have to do with a daily post from your friendly neighborhood CPA? This is a good example of a control failure. Cash walked out of the door because something that should have been working didn’t. The zipper was well designed, but it wasn’t well implemented. The same thing can happen in your business.
You can put great controls in place to prevent cash walking out the door, or maintaining quality control, but if you don’t actually implement and test the controls, they won’t work as intended. So make sure as you are putting policies, procedures, and systems in place that you are actually taking the time to make sure they are working. Don't be an idiot walking down the side of the freeway.