Substantive Procedures for Cash Outflow Irregularities Essay

There is no documentation of any payroll processes or procedures. The absence of documented procedures can cause confusion, inefficiencies, and may result in failure to meet deadlines not only within the payroll department but also for other area of the organizations that require information from the payroll department.

2. What procedures can auditors perform to detect fraudulent entries made during the consolidation process?

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

3. Substantive tests procedures: The audit team should perform substantive tests on Smackey’s accounting transactions and

Throughout most sources, though, it is clear to see that employer fraud is the most prevalent and costly type of fraud. Employer fraud includes a number of schemes used by employers to reduce the number of workers' compensation insurance premiums by underreporting payroll, misclassifying employees' occupations and misrepresenting their claims experience. According to the National Council on Compensation, the most common frauds include:

After thoroughly understanding the operation of the Apollo Shoes, we will be able to determine the frame under which “fraud” can occur. The second step consist of the testing the journal entries. In this we will select the transactions occurred in the financial reporting year and will check the same, for the reason of their occurrence and supporting documents of the same. If during the test any misstatement is identified, the management will be asked to rectify the same and appropriate adjustments are done.

Analytical procedures should be applied to the determination of commission that is being paid to Smackey salespeople. The commissions on the average are off by 11 percent showing that they may not be reasonable. The auditors also need to perform the analytical procedures for inventory to determine if the inventory is being misstated. This would be a concern due to the amount of waste and returns. The test of details of balances will need to be done on the accounts receivables to determine if they are properly stated.

There are various procedures that could be taken in to account that would, if properly implemented, would have detected the frauds that occurred within the companies. There are many control risks that should have been taking regarding inventory along with preliminary audit strategies for the inventory and substantive test to be done that would have raised many flags during the typical audits as well as in depth ones.

1. There’s a potential risk of delegating one-person manipulating the recording and authorizing of the payroll accounts.

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)

Phar-Mor was known as one of the major discount chain retailers in the late 1980’s - early 1990’s. It was founded by Mickey Monus, a gambler in nature, who with the help of senior management was “cooking the books” for years to cover up his loses. The reason why senior management agreed to do this fraud is the belief in unique ability of their leader to fix everything later on. This case is known as one of the biggest accounting frauds in the corporate history of the U.S. This paper will analyze who was affected by this fraud, the motives behind it and what systems of control failed to prevent it.

a. “Analytical procedures are an important part of the audit process and consist of evaluations of financial information made by a study of plausible relationships among both financial and nonfinancial data. Analytical procedures range from simple comparisons to the use of complex models involving many

a. The falsification of inventory count sheets. – Auditors should have observed a physical count of the inventory to check for accuracy. The case had mentioned that Eddie Antar would ship inventory to his retail stores before auditors arrived to conceal any shortages. (Knapp, 2011) These sites should have been audited unannounced in order to hinder any attempt by the client to conceal fraud.

Fraud is defined as a deliberate misrepresentation that causes a person or business to suffer damages, often in the form of monetary losses through deception or concealment. And Occupational Fraud as defined by the ACFE is the use of one’s occupation for personal enrichment through the deliberate misuse or misapplication of the employing organization’s resources or assets. Traditional fraud triangle theory by Donald Cressey explains that propensity of fraud occurring in an organization lies on three critical elements which are Pressure, Opportunity, and Rationalization.

Following the risk assessment procedures, substantive procedures are designed and conducted to detect material misstatements of relevant assertions. Substantive procedures include analytical procedures and tests of details. Analytical procedures involve evaluations of financial statement information by a study of relationships among financial and nonfinancial data. Tests of details may be divided into three types. One test is the test of account balances to address whether there are misstatements in the ending balance of an account. In the case of Crazy Eddie, auditors should have put greater attention to inventory and accounts payable accounts. The second test is a test of classes of transactions to determine whether particular types of transactions have been properly accounted for during the period. Crazy Eddies fraudulently classified these transshipping transactions as retail sales to inflate its sales revenue and continue growth at existing stores. A key ratio for retailers is to compare growth in existing stores to growth from new stores. The third and final test is a test of disclosures to evaluate whether financial statement disclosures are properly presented. Crazy Eddie prepared bogus debit memos of over $20 million to understate accounts payable.