Internal Accountant’s Report to Management
ACC 556
This report will present the necessary information needed to understand and decide whether to perform a full financial status review before proceeding with the bid. The information covered will include: * The effect of occupational fraud and abuse on the company * U.S. governmental oversight of accounting fraud and abuse and its effect on the company Potential corruption schemes to be aware of in the company
Recommendation of types of accounting evidence and methods of gathering such evidence to support the financial status review.
Fraud deterrence occurs in several stages, and the key is to know that prevention is not to same as deterrence. First is the impact of controls
…show more content…
Violations recognized in an organization are required to begin administrative or judicial proceeding. The outcomes of these proceedings typically offer a settlement or a hearing. Moreover, cases are reported to the SEC in official documents known as litigation releases or administrative proceedings. When the documents are reported as violations of the Securities Acts, they are labeled as Accounting and Auditing Enforcement Releases.
Corruption schemes have differences as well as similarities. Bribery is a scheme that impacts a legal deed by proposing, providing, obtaining, or lobbying something of value to change the outcome in a favorable fashion. On the other hand commercial is similar in that something of value is offered in exchange for a certain business decision. Illegal gratuities are perks given as a reward to an employee in exchange for a decision. Most of the time illegal gratuities influence employees to make decisions not in the best interest of the organization. Economic extortion has to do with an organization or individual making a payment that will bring unwanted attention or impairment to the organization. These types of corruption schemes are very similar; however the differences exist in the conflicts of interest. Conflicts of interest occur
The week four individual paper addresses the implementation of Activity Based Costing (ABC) by Super Bakery, Inc., a virtual corporation founded by Franco Harris. Specifically, management strategies, the reasoning behind an ABC system, and the alternatives of a job order cost system or a process order cost system are assessed for this enterprise.
In addition, associated with the misapplication of accounting methods, the financial industry has been plagued with one disaster after another involving numerous scandals from top leading American companies. Consequently, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act was passed in 2002 compromising eleven sections that are generated to insure the responsibilities of the company’s managers and executives. This act identifies criminal penalties for particular unethical practices and currently has new policies that a corporation must follow in their financial reporting. The following examples describe some of biggest accounting methods as a result of the greed and the outrage of the ethical and financial misconduct by the senior management of public corporations.
The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX), also known as the Public Company Accounting Reform and Investor Protection Act and the Auditing Accountability and Responsibility Act, was signed into law on July 30, 2002, by President George W. Bush as a direct response to the corporate financial scandals of Enron, WorldCom, and Tyco International (Arens & Elders, 2006; King & Case, 2014;Rezaee & Crumbley, 2007). Fraudulent financial activities and substantial audit failures like those of Arthur Andersen and Ernst and Young had destroyed public trust and investor confidence in the accounting profession. The debilitating consequences of these perpetrators and their crimes summoned a massive effort by the government and the accounting profession to fight all forms of corruption through regulatory, legal, auditing, and accounting changes.
Now one must ascertain that such regulations would only be applied under certain governance systems- a good government; a government that is liable to the people. In such cases, there should be funds available for social programs. I will classify social programs as two types, based on how they should prioritizes allocation of funds:
According to Benston (1977) an unaware public pays for government-required accounting disclosure. Sunstein (1999) claims that disclosure of information allows the federal government to control public and private conduct. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act Over the decades accounting regulations have come from various sources. The Securities and Exchange Commission as well as the Internal Revenue Service and Interstate Commerce Commission are examples of regulatory bodies that promulgate accounting regulations. A more recent example occurred during the 1970s. During the Watergate era there were a number of investigations, some of which affected American business. One of the investigations, conducted by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in 1975, revealed that 19 publiclyheld corporations had made illegal campaign contributions and that these contributions were made from cash accounts that had not been recorded on the corporation’s books. (Heldack, 1977) This prompted the SEC to launch an investigation into what were considered ―questionable payments.‖ What came out of the investigation was that many U.S. multinational corporations were making hundreds of millions of dollars in ―questionable payments‖ to foreign officials to obtain business. As a result, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) was unanimously adopted by Congress in 1977. Bribery of foreign officials to obtain business for the corporation
Head Usher: While the church may not be currently experiencing anything wrong with the usher selection and volunteer system at the church, some improvements might be considered. The church might consider making the head usher a year-long term, elected by church members to create continuity, but also impose term limits – possibly every 3-4 years a head usher must take a sabbatical. Additionally, because the head usher role is so pivotal in the collection process, and it is a place where mistakes or malfeasance can easily take place; it would be helpful for the ushers and the financial secretary to be present in the collection counts, the day of, so someone outside the usher department can verify tithe counts.
Since the majority of US thrive on the use of credit cards, the accounts receivables for a company may no longer be on a cash-to-cash basis. A company may need to sell these accounts to other companies who specialize in handling accounts receivables if they need cash more quickly or if it would be too costly to perform the necessary billing to collect on the account.
Larson Inc. must consider the alternative economic futures for their industry. In any market, economic conditions will change over time. The company must be able to adapt and change with the economy to remain successful. The company needs to find solutions for the changing economy to keep increasing their revenue and decreasing their costs. The economy may go through a recession, expansion and peaks over their years in business. Larson, Inc. needs to analyze the difference scenarios and determine the best course of action for each type of economic future. Also, the company must consider the economy’s stage in the business cycle to make well-informed decisions.
The money statements is used by both external and internal users including investors, creditors, managers, and executives staff. There are several analysis that are used in many ways of Horizontal Analysis and Vertical Analysis. Horizontal Vertical compares in specific items over number of accounting period that many people uses to balance their information. There are compared in different ways of in Absolute Dollars and by percentage ratios that helps with calculations. Then the Vertical Analysis which compares each separate figure that shows in Financial statements. The explanation of the analysis through income statements and using the balance sheet The analyze information helps many businesses and owners to make good business decisions so understanding the analysis will be great importance to how people compares the analysis.
Evidence of bribery or erroneous accounting is enough proof for the government to file a case against an individual or company regardless of intent, under the FCPA laws (Clayton, 2011). There are three types of improper violations for the anti-bribery provision and they include: the issuer, domestic concern, the foreign national and businesses. The issuers are the ones that are registered in the US or are required to file Security and Exchange Commission. Domestic concern is any person or business that has their place of business in the US or is under the US law. Lastly, the foreign nationals and business in which deals with corrupt payments that are made in the United States, there are also the third parties and agents that are as well included and have the same conditions apply to them as they do to the issuer, domestic concern, and the foreign national and businesses. The second provision that is involved with the FCPA is the Accounting provision and that consist of contracts enforcing Securities and Exchange Commission. The SEC enforces the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) by bringing the civil actions against the issuers and their officers, directors, employees, and agents. FCPA has two accounting requirements that are recordkeeping and internal controls. The recordkeeping is there to ensure that the books, records, and accounts are held at the standards of what the company should be at. This is designed to cover business
To illustrate the linkage of management assertions to audit evidence in the context of auditing Notes Payable.
B The appraised value of the land is a good choice but it is based on the market. So to get more of a transaction them trading price of the stock is probably the best fit
Which of the following would not be considered an external user of accounting data for the Julian Company?
It is my opinion that a full financial status review would be in the best interest of the Company. We have taken pride in the fact that we qualify for Government contracts. We should not let anyone else find any fault within our Company. In conducting such a review, we would be able to thoroughly examine aspects of not only our control systems but our personnel and practices. Through a full financial status review we will also be able to determine if there is any fraud or abusive actions being enacted against the Company.
The outcome of improper fraud detection or a false positive would result in Poor User Experience, Customer Dissatisfaction and Lack of Focus eventually resulting in impact to bottom line.