A Complete Guide for Accounts Payable Fraud Investigation

Occupational frauds, especially in the field of revenue, are a thriving problem. A huge bulk of revenue is lost every year and remains unnoticed due to lack of awareness and or as a result of improper scanning. According to research by competent authority, in an average 5% of all revenue is fraudulently extracted in a single accounting year. In general, such cases include false billing, computer based payment, check graft etc, which are preventable and are recoverable as well. Once detected, the prosecution is easy and simple as such crimes leave the tale-tale paper and other prosecutable evidence those pinpoints the criminal. A complete understanding of these fraud basics is indispensable for the accounting mechanism of any successful company.

Crucial Steps of a corruption or fraud investigation

In order to get access to the evidence of any occupational fraud or corruption and referring the same to the concerned law enforcement agencies, following points requires due consideration.

• Create a hypothesis by analyzing available data and amend it by verifying with available facts, until you make a reasonable and concrete conclusion.
• The most prevalent and easy accounts payable fraud is skimming off some extra dollar by the AP clerk and the manager of the department. The way of doing it is by creating invoices those are just below their authorized approval limits.
• Duplicate payments are the other very easy and most common AP corruption. This also is preventable and recoverable.
• Check whether the first digit of amounts of the invoice under the scanner is on the higher side like 9 or 8 very often. Such observations should create suspicions.
• Use similar matching on the fields of amount, date and invoice number. You will have a shorter audit report for easy scrutiny.
• You can easily detect check frauds by verifying bank statements and missing check numbers. So, make sure to follow this vital step.

Join On-Line Accounting Fraud Courses

Anyone can get interested in the matters of fraud basics and related matters. If you are one of them, following information will be of great help to become a professional in the field of fraud and corruption investigation, which is gaining popularity and obviously very lucrative as well. By undergoing an online course you can learn and develop technical skills in the investigation, analyzing data and financial evidence, theories of business ethics and related criminology.

There are many openings for a trained and certified financial fraud and corruption investigator. You may find employment opportunity in the private and public sectors.

For more information about Fraud Basics please visit at www.accountinged.com

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