Assessing Risk Of Manipulating Over Financial Reporting

Appendix A.2 also lists several factors that could provide opportunities for management/employees to commit fraud. One factor that could lead to fraud is if, “There is ineffective monitoring of management as a result of: domination of management by a single person or small group without compensating controls.” The auditors should have taken notice of the lack of controls and segregation of duties with respect to Phar-Mor’s

With different industry definitions and viewpoints, fraud can be a tough issue for audit committee members to grasp for oversight purposes. The legal obligations of audit committee members have intensified because their standard duty of care and loyalty to the entity has increased in light of management fraud activities.

Professional auditing standards discuss the three key “conditions” that are typically present when a financial fraud occurs and identify a lengthy list of “fraud risk factors.”

2 Managing fraud risk: The audit committee perspective Fraud in a fi nancial statement audit

CAS 300 requires auditors to their audit using a risk based model where the nature, timing and extent of audit procedures are based on the assessed risk of material misstatement. Pickett (2006) argues that for audits to be effective and efficient, much of the audit effort should be focused on areas that are considered to pose the highest audit risk. Additional audit procedures should be linked to individual audit assertions whereas other audit procedures need to be performed as and when needed. Thus, for an audit plan to be put in place, it is necessary for an auditor to come up with a risk profile of the client comprising an understanding of the business operating by the audit client, assess business risk and also perform its preliminary analytical review.

Potential for misstatement & fraud: Compliance with the established procedures and controls were found to be ineffective. The fraud reporting process, technically put in place does not serve its intended purpose. The ineffective control environment has created an attitude and tone across the company where errors and inappropriate behavior may be seen as acceptable, thus creating opportunity for concealing fraud and potential misstatements.

This is the first stage in assessing the risk of material misstatements, where the auditor considers the risk of material misstatement before consideration of any internal controls. This is done at the financial statement level by considering such things as the nature of the business, the industry, and any previous experience with the client.

Since auditors are not responsible for the actual financial statements, only the authenticity of them, as you stated, the more

Financial investors rely on the accuracy of company’s financial statements so they depend on external auditors to insure that the financial statements are free of any material misstatements. 3. In the

B) I think the auditors should have equal responsibility for detecting material misstatements due to error and fraud. It’s their job to make sure the financial statements are as accurate as possible. Although it may be hard to check all the information from a company it’s the responsibility of the auditor to sign off that everything is in check.

Fraudulent acts by individuals can negatively impact the company’s reputation and incur significant legal costs, and lead to incarceration, not to mention the downfall of the entire organization.

Fraud is defined as a deliberate misrepresentation that causes a person or business to suffer damages, often in the form of monetary losses through deception or concealment (Albrecht et al, 2014). Occupational Fraud as defined by the ACFE is the use of one’s occupation for personal enrichment through the deliberate misuse or misapplication of the employing organization’s resources or assets (Association of Certified Fraud Examiners, 2012). Traditional fraud triangle theory explains that propensity of fraud occurring in an organization lies on three critical elements, which are Pressure, Opportunity, and Rationalization (Albrecht et al., 2014).

The auditor must obtain an understanding of the entity and its environment, including internal controls, so that they can identify and assess the risks of material misstatement on financial statements due to fraud or error and design and perform further audit procedures.

Following the risk assessment procedures, substantive procedures are designed and conducted to detect material misstatements of relevant assertions. Substantive procedures include analytical procedures and tests of details. Analytical procedures involve evaluations of financial statement information by a study of relationships among financial and nonfinancial data. Tests of details may be divided into three types. One test is the test of account balances to address whether there are misstatements in the ending balance of an account. In the case of Crazy Eddie, auditors should have put greater attention to inventory and accounts payable accounts. The second test is a test of classes of transactions to determine whether particular types of transactions have been properly accounted for during the period. Crazy Eddies fraudulently classified these transshipping transactions as retail sales to inflate its sales revenue and continue growth at existing stores. A key ratio for retailers is to compare growth in existing stores to growth from new stores. The third and final test is a test of disclosures to evaluate whether financial statement disclosures are properly presented. Crazy Eddie prepared bogus debit memos of over $20 million to understate accounts payable.

Financial statement fraud is usually a means to an end rather than an end in itself. When people "cook the books" they may doing it to "buy more time" to quietly fix business problems that prevent their entities from achieving its expected earnings or complying with loan covenants (Fraud Magazine, 2014. It may also be done to obtain or renew financing that would not be granted or would be smaller if honest financial statements were provided. People intent on profiting from crime may commit financial statement fraud to obtain loans they can then siphon off for personal gain or to inflate the price of the company 's shares, allowing them to sell their holdings or exercise stock options at a profit (Fraud Magazine, 2014). However, in many past cases of financial statement fraud, the perpetrators have gained little or nothing personally in financial terms. Instead the focus appears to have been preserving their status as leaders of the entity - a status that might have been lost