I love August. Not for the heat - in fact for that reason alone August could be scratched from the calendar. I love August because it is time to start harvesting our fruit trees. They are laden with fruit this time of year. The plums, in particular, are so prolific that if we are not prepared for the harvest, much of the fruit will go to waste; waste not, want not as my grandmother would say. We have a tendency to go after the low hanging fruit because it's easy. In fact much of the low hanging, barely ripened fruit is eaten long before it makes it to the house. However, I've learned over the years, as good as the low hanging fruit tastes, some of the sweetest, juiciest fruits are among the slowest to ripen and are nestled in the highest branches. It takes patience and a tall ladder to harvest them.

Good internal controls are essential no matter how small the company for many valid reasons -- fraud prevention, embezzlement detection, accurate financials, the potential to go public and a Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) compliant customer requiring it, are all reasons to follow good internal control practices. Implementing controls into the financial accounting software alone is not enough to ensure compliance -- it takes people power too.