Financial Accounting and Detecting Fraud
Financial Accounting and Detecting Fraud
OBJECTIVES
- Discuss the structure and foundations of financial reporting
- Be aware of creative accounting and how it can be determined
- Determine the need for forensic accounting by means of case study and other analysis
- Appreciate the nature or Benford’s Law and its increasingly important role in the prevention and detection of fraud
- Discuss the role of the auditor in detecting fraud
- Carrying out a variety of statistical tests on financial reports and accounting data
WHO SHOULD ATTEND?
Finance and accounting professionals and those for whom the prevention and detection of fraud is a major issue.
COURSE OUTLINE
Day1 – Financial Accounting Review
- Structure of financial reports
- Regulation of financial reporting
- Financial reporting standards
- The Analysis of Financial Reports
- Detecting bias in accounting numbers
- Qualitative analysis: what people say and what they might mean
Day2 – Creative Accounting
- What is creative accounting and why is it a bad thing?
- Inappropriate accruals, estimates, and excessive provisions
- Identifying premature revenue recognition and fictitious revenue
- Aggressive capitalisation
- Creative income statements: classification and disclosure
- Problems with cash flow reporting
Day3 – Forensic Accounting
- The basics of forensic accounting
- The need for Sarbanes-Oxley
- The going concern concept in greater detail
- Cases in which forensic accounting was used
- Off balance sheet finance
- Introduction to Benford’s Law
Day4 – THE ROLE OF THE AUDITOR AND DETECTING FRAUD
- The Role of the Auditor in the Prevention and Detection of Fraud
- Deterring Fraud – The fraud triangle
- The COSO “Internal Control – Integrated Framework,” (COSO Model)
- 20 ways to detect fraud
- Identifying fraud using time series analysis
- Fraud risk assessments
Day5 – Tools for Detecting Fraud
- Further Statistical Analysis of accounting and other data
- Further application of Benford’s Law
- Chi Square and Kolmogorov Smirnoff Tests
- Mean Absolute Deviation test
- Mantissa Arc Test