18. Cooking the Financial Books
Assumptions (What ingredients to include)
Estimates (How much to include)
You may assume that they’re accurate
down to the last dollar. Not true! The
balance in the cash account is exact,
but virtually every other number you
see in a financial report is based on an
estimate.
20. Round Trip Recipe
Pre-Paid Services 4
Million
Compa
Vender
ny
Current Revenue 1
Million
Reporting more revenue
21. Deferral of Revenue Recipe
Custo
mer
1
Millio
n
2 Million
Balance
Sheet
Umearned
Revenue
Current
Revenue
Manipulating revenue
22. - Sold equipment on four-year leases, including
service and maintenance.
- Booked all the revenues up front.
- Xerox mis-stated four years' worth of profits,
resulting in an overstatement of close to $6bn.
23. Channel Stuffing
Company inflates sales
figures by forcing more
products
through
a
distribution channel than
the channel is capable of
selling to the world at
large.
26. - Grow rapidly by buying other
garbage companies. But
didn't know to run them.
- Changed the depreciation of
their 20,000 tracks from 8-10
years to 12-15 years and did
the same for their 1.5 million
dumpsters
- Took a pretax charge -a onetime write off- of 3.54 billion
against its earnings
27. Underreporting ‘line costs’
(interconnection expenses
with other telecommunication
companies) by capitalizing
these costs on the balance
sheet rather than properly
expensing them.
In June 2002, the company admitted it had inflated its profits by $3.8bn
between January 2001 and March 2002.
By the end of 2003, it was estimated that the company's total assets had
been inflated by around $11 billion
28. Are the accountants making the right
judgment decisions?
Questions:
Who controls your organization?
*“Other” category was not included in the 2010 Report.
*“Formal Fraud Risk Assessments” category was not included in the 2010 Report.
Note: The percentages for frequency of anti-fraud controls reflected in 2010 Report contained a computational inaccuracy. The percentages included in this chart have been corrected.
8The following key applies to the charts on slides 125-128:
• External Audit of F/S = Independent external audits of the organization’s financial statements
• Internal Audit / FE Department = Internal audit department or fraud examination department
• External Audit of ICOFR = Independent audits of the organization’s internal controls over financial reporting
• Management Certification of F/S = Management certification of the organization’s financial statements
*“Other” category was not included in the prior years’ Reports.
*“Other” category was not included in the prior years’ Reports.
*“Other” category was not included in the 2010 Report.
Note: The percentages for behavioral red flags displayed by perpetrators in the 2010 Report contained a computational inaccuracy. The percentages included in this chart have been corrected.
This is not real profit
Many managers think that income statement shows how much the cash the company earned during the period
How much they spend and how much left over. And the left over amount will be the profit / No
Income statement focuses on revenue and expenses and profit
Accural Accounting method
When you make decisions you should look at the Assumptions What are they (what to include and what not to include) – estimates how they are implemented – Bias of the implemeation– implications of the implemattion