5) a) Evidence supporting USSC’s claim that the costs in question involved tooling modifications: * Collected invoices/purchase orders, obviously labelled accordingly * USSC executives’ explanations * Explanations of Mr. More and guided tour at Lacey Manufacturing Company b) Evidence supporting USSC’s claim that the costs in question involved generic production expenses: * Information provided by Mr. Yamont of Barden Corporation * Confusing nature of explanations provided by USSC executives * Changed opinion of Mr. More * Per unit pricing * Internal controls at Lacey shop floor, regarding charging working hours to production/tooling works * Analytical techniques: huge increase in USSC fixed assets …show more content…
Findings discovered on March 3rd 1982 during discussions with USSC executives should have been analysed more closely. Even though the results likely would have been similar with the case Lacey Manufacturing Company, it would have been good to aim at arranging similar visit also to other companies supplying “tooling services” and compare answers. Also, as in this case it appears USSC executives have information superiority against auditors, it would have been good to appoint external expert in field of manufacturing to provide his opinion, if “tooling services” really had been supplied. Even though the business is new, e.g. a general machine shop expert could have been contributed. Further analytical work also could have been done – even though based on P&L easy answers were not available (e.g. net sales/cost of goods sold had been rather stable and hence does not refer to huge capitalization of production costs). Also, it might have been good idea to consult USSC Board of Directors on corporate governance and internal controls, especially considering the situation of the company and obvious incentives to inflate earnings (need to raise capital to finance growth and development investments). This would have been especially important, if Hope had suspected fraud. Further, if Hope had suspected illegal acts, on our opinion Hope could have been more “flexible”, when it comes to confidentiality requirements of auditors. Then he would have been more open
As indicated by PCAOB, the written representation cannot be a substitute for substantive procedures. Thus, auditors did not perform adequate procedures to test the management’s estimates. What’s more, inquires were heavily relied on the management’s integrity. Auditors ignored the professional skepticism. Finally, the 30 years and 15 years useful lives, which were adopted previously by Little Drummer, were not appropriately audited. Since the engagement team did not contact the predecessor auditors, the team did not get any audit documents from predecessor auditors regarding the assumptions of 30 years and 15 years. There was no evidence to show the reasonableness of these two assumptions.
The one pattern within the data that appears to be inconsistent yet if the auditors had established an internal control systems would be Monus the founder moving so freely throughout every aspect of the company with no one checking his movements. From choosing what properties to purchase to purchasing supplies. In any company there should be segregation of duties. For example, the person making the deposits should not be the person writing the checks. Had there been stipulations made it would not have been so convenient to commit the
#2. Internal Control Risks; audit planning decisions. Some internal control risks common among large, high-volume retail stores include dealing with inherent limitations and potential fraud. Even if a well-designed internal control system is in place, the employees using it are ultimately the deciding factors in its effectiveness. For example, management may instruct an employee or easily-influenced executive (of another company) to alter information or confirmations or multiple employees may conspire to steal assets or misstate records (collusion; misappropriation of assets).
Because of its inherent limitations, internal control over financial reporting may not prevent or detect misstatements. Also, projections of any evaluation of effectiveness to future periods are subject to the risk that controls may become inadequate because of changes in conditions, or that the degree of compliance with the policies or procedures may deteriorate (Louwers & Reynolds, 2007). We believe that the audit evidence obtained is sufficient and appropriate to provide a reasonable basis for our opinions.
It is not possible for the auditor to be 100% certain that he/she has obtained all evidence regarding all significant related party transactions, especially if management is trying to conceal something. However, the
6.) The Wilkerson Company original case is not effective and accurate without including an ABC analysis. ABC allowed us to assess the business performance of each of its businesses including: Valves, Pumps and Flow Controllers. This enabled us to realize that the Flow Controllers business is not profitable with a Gross Margin of -11.31%. I recommend specifically solving the problem of pre-tax margin going from 10% to less than 3%. The strategic decisions that need to be made are improving the unprofitable Flow Controllers business unit, while simultaneously increasing the sales of the more profitable Valves and Pumps business units. I would capitalize on the highest margin business of the Valves. Specifically, I would develop marketing strategies on how to grow market share in this business. I would assess what we are doing in this business and I would reapply it to our other businesses. This would include evaluating and eliminating costs in the other business units,
This subject company in this case study is WoolEx Mills. The top management team at the Mills had to act fast to prevent the accusations charged upon them, so that they may venture deep into the United States market. In the process, they had to act in a way that will present the company’s financial statements; cash flows in a way that they did not show any suspicious fraudulent activities. The type of fraud in this case study is known as manipulation of accounts which involves the act of offering the accounts in the way they are not in reality.
The analyzed case study refers to the Hollate Manufacturing company, which belonged to the home construction industry since 1950s. The company operated in the United States and Canada with 14 divisions spread throughout the countries. Hollate’s performance was significantly better than its peers, resulting in $1 billion sales. The company maintained its growth over the years due to growth-through-acquisition strategy. However, the home construction industry suffered downturn in recent years. Hollate manufacturing faced a problem with audit as far as with personnel. Four suggestions are given along with answer to the question how to avoid alike situations.
Navistar considered quality and on-time delivery as a priority that came before costs; therefore, top management as well as initiatives to improve processes and on-time delivery supported various improvement initiatives to quality programs. Andy is an assembly supervisor but had very broad job responsibilities. Andy’s time was taken up in areas such as supplier quality evaluations, internal process documentation, process improvement, and much more. His focus was very widespread and his day was drawn away from scheduled and unscheduled meetings; this position required long hours and weekend work. In addition to the quality issues, truck interior trim shortages was another challenge, which resulted in reordering of trim parts leading to additional material handling, and post-assembly installation. These delayed parts required overtime that increased cost and delayed delivery of the finished truck of the customer. Issues came from both Navistar and their supplier Trimco. Navistar had design changes such as different sizes, repositioning of mechanisms and other various designer and material changes; however, these changes to the truck interiors were not communicated to Trimco before production runs were completed. As a result, parts were shipped with different specifications than those needed for proper fit during assembly. Due to the lack of coordination and communication,
Andres was forced to import product from French division as he ran out of capacity several times due to new machines performing inadequately. This added an overhead expense of approximately 2147 (Additional maintenance costs + Transfer costs)
Riggers Inc (“Riggers, “client, or “Company”) is audited by Stone LLC CPA firm (“Stone” or “auditor”). The Compa” ” ny builds and owns offshore drilling rigs. Riggers is a US-based corporation that recently expanded its operations into Brazil (the only foreign-based operations for Riggers). As a result of this expansion, the client has encountered two complex issues related to accounting for income taxes. During the 2012 year-end audit, the auditors must use professional judgment with regard to these two income tax accounting issues. The first issue relates to
This essay explores the corporate collapse of Harris-Scarfe on April 3 2001, which before their collapse was Australia’s third largest retail group (Buchanan 2004, p. 55). It will explore the collapse in the context of the auditing framework. In particular, how the financial indiscretions were not discovered by the auditors, which were going on as early as six years prior to the collapse (Buchanan 2004, p. 62). To start with, we define what the auditing objective is in order to work out where it failed in this case. ASA 200.11/ISA 200.11 defines the auditing objective as one that needs to ascertain reasonable assurance that the financial report as a whole is free from misstatement, whether due to error or fraud. In doing so the auditor can give an opinion of whether the financial report was prepared in accordance with the financial reporting framework (Gay & Simnett 2012, p. 12).
The chief executive of the company was closely working with the vendors whose confirmations were vital in the auditing work and hence they could have submitted false confirmations. The auditing firm established a national risk management program for its clients and so national reviews were done to identify the high risk items in the financial statement. The vendor allowances were particularly high but they were not documented. As such, the auditors were supposed to demand for the documentations and compare them with the real figures. It is however noted that most of the documentations received were non-standard and this could have led to a different audit report given that vendor allowances were earlier identified as a high risk area. Inventory management was found to be poor especially in the allowances for inventory reserves. The audit firm was therefore obliged to carry out a thorough evaluation of the inventory reserves and determine whether it was reasonable. The valuation was also supposed to include all classes of inventory but for the case of the company, the evaluation excluded instances where no sales had been made. Hence, this evaluation could not accurately represent the position of the inventory reserve in the company. (Waters,2003)
It is said in the case that "due to the losses in the system", CBF created a policy to increase the size of an order to give way to rejected boards. The company has to make allowances in production
This paper explores the ZZZZ Best Company which was begun by a 16 year old individual who was able to pull the wool over the eyes of many customers, investors and auditors. This paper will define the difference between review and audit when it comes to financial reports, comments on the procedures provided with regard to the management assertion of occurrence, verification of payments for jobs and how they can lead auditors to improper conclusion, the purpose of predecessor-successor auditor communications, as well as whom needs to initiate the communication and information that needs to be obtained. The paper also addresses the limitations of the confidentiality agreement and how and when