Risk Management & Internal Controls

A trusted 10 year accounting employee was found to have fraudulently misappropriated funds of the business.

Facts were:

• The company was defrauded and did not know by how much

• This resulted in the immediate dismissal of the employee so the owner urgently required a qualified experienced accountant to take over the day-to-day administration of the business

• Undertake a review of the systems and procedures to ensure there was not a repeat of the fraud

• Owners not financially literate so did not understand the concept and power of internal controls

Solutions

1. Skills testing

2. Skills training

3. Consulting

Consulting

The consultancy role was undertaken by one of our senior consultants with more than 20 years experience in risk management and internal controls. 

The job was undertaken in 7 steps:

1. Determine how much the ex-employee defrauded the company by investigating individual transactions as well as identifying source documentation

2. Interview and select three “good fit” candidates as potential replacements to the accountant

3. The final selected candidate to undertake the Exemplar Skills Gap test

4. Analyse the existing systems and procedures by interviewing the owner and staff

5. Document a fully workable set of systems and procedures for the accounting and administration staff

6. Highlight current risk levels to management which were then given a risk rating i.e., High Risk, Medium Risk and Low Risk

7. Recommended changes to current procedures in order to avoid further fraud problems

8. You never think this will happen to you, but when it does you will wish you had been more proactive than reactive.