What should you do if your business gets burgled?

No matter whether it’s an office building, a retail store or a restaurant, having your premises of business broken into and burgled is nothing short of a nightmare for a business owner.

The disruption to operations, the loss of inventory and potential compromise of key data all carry major financial and logistical consequences that can derail your business in the short term or potentially worse. As the leader of the business, it’s your job to get the organisation back on track as quickly as possible, but where do you begin with recovering from a situation like this?

Here are the four steps to take if your business gets burgled.

Contact the relevant authorities

An obvious one, but the sooner you can contact the police and report the burglary, the sooner the road to recovery can begin. If the burglary happened a little while ago, use a non-emergency number to make the call.

Once the police are there, they can begin gathering evidence and produce a report for your records and your insurance company. They’ll also be able to advise on the process of managing things in the aftermath of the burglary. In best case scenarios, the police may be able to find the perpetrators and recover stolen goods for you.

Check your inventory and cash float

The next job is to document everything you can about the break in and the cost to your cash float and inventory. Collect notes, photos and receipts of what’s been taken and confirm the original cost of the items in question.

This will not only be of relevance to your insurance but also useful for your personal and business financial records to log accurate losses and recovery figures.

Get to grips with your insurance

Once you’re done with the immediate aftermath, you need to get on the phone to your insurance. It’s probably worth reviewing your insurance policy first, but most policies will offer replacement of anything taken or damaged in the burglary.

Most insurers will want you to get in touch within 24 hours of the discovery of the incident, so don’t hold back on making the call.

Seek additional funding to get back on your feet

If for whatever reason your insurance won’t foot the entire bill, or worse, you don’t have insurance, you’ll need to consider additional funding routes to recover from the burglary. In these sorts of instances, an unsecured small business loan could help you get back on your feet, or crowdfunding from family and friends.

You may also wish to seek additional finance to improve things like the security of the premises, in which case the options mentioned above can also make sense.

While no business owner should have to deal with a break in to their property, it’s essential you know how to go about handling the situation should it arise. Managing the aftermath of a break in largely comes down to a few common-sense steps, so stay level-headed, make the relevant calls and look to get things back to normal as quickly as possible.