Accounting and Finance for Your Small Business Second Edition_5

Tham khảo tài liệu 'accounting and finance for your small business second edition_5', tài chính - ngân hàng, tài chính doanh nghiệp phục vụ nhu cầu học tập, nghiên cứu và làm việc hiệu quả
Nội dung trích xuất từ tài liệu:
Accounting and Finance for Your Small Business Second Edition_5 Preparing to Operate the Business SECTION I Although many potential controls are listed here, you should attempt to create a mix of controls that balances their cost against incremental gains in the level of control achieved. • Compare check register to actual check number sequence. The com- puter’s list of checks printed should exactly match the checks that actually have been used. If not, this can be evidence that someone has removed a check from the check stock in hopes that it will not be noticed. This irregularity is most common for laser check stock, since these checks are stored as separate sheets and so can be more easily pilfered than continuous rolls of check stock. • Conduct spot audits of petty cash. It is possible to misrepresent the contents of a petty cash box through the use of miscellaneous receipts and IOU vouchers. By making unscheduled audits, you sometimes can spot these irregularities. • Control check stock. The check stock cannot be stored in the sup- ply closet along with the pencils and paper, because anyone can remove a check from the stack and then is only a forged signa- ture away from stealing funds from the company. Instead, the check stock should be locked in a secure cabinet, to which only authorized personnel have access. • Control signature plates. If anyone can access the company’s sig- nature plates, then it is possible not only to forge checks, but also to stamp authorized signatures on all sorts of legal docu- ments. Accordingly, these plates should always be kept in the company safe. • Deposit all checks daily. If checks are kept on hand for several days, there is an increased likelihood that someone will gain access to them and cash them into his or her own account. Consequently, bank deposits should be made every day. • Divert incoming cash to a lockbox. If cash or checks from customers never reach a company, a host of control problems related to the potential misuse of that cash goes away. To do this, set up a lock- box that is controlled by the company’s bank, and ask customers to send their payments to the lockbox address. • Limit petty cash reserves. If there is little money in a petty cash box, then there is less incentive for anyone to steal the box. If a 82 Basic Control Systems CHAPTER 3 large amount of cash volume flows through the box, a useful alternative is procurement cards. • Reconcile petty cash. There tends to be a high incidence of fraud related to petty cash boxes, since money can be removed from them more easily. To reduce the incidence of these occurrences, initiate unscheduled petty cash box reconciliations, which may catch perpetrators before they have covered their actions with a false paper trail. This control can be strengthened by targeting those petty cash boxes that have experienced unusually high levels of cash replenishment requests. • Require that petty cash vouchers be filled out in ink. Anyone main- taining a petty cash box can easily alter a voucher previously submitted as part of a legitimate transaction and remove cash from the petty cash box to match the altered voucher. To avoid this, require that all vouchers be completed in ink. To be extra careful, you can even require users to write the amount of any cash transactions on vouchers in words instead of numbers (e.g., “fifty-two dollars” instead of “52.00”), since numbers can be more easily modified. • Perform bank reconciliations. This is one of the most important controls anywhere in a company, for it reveals all possible cash inflows and outflows. Carefully compare the bank statement’s list of checks cashed to the company’s internal records to ensure that checks have not been altered once they leave the company or that the books have not been altered to disguise the amount of the checks. Also compare the bank’s deposit records to the books to see if there are discrepancies that may be caused by someone taking checks or cash out of the batched bank deposits. Further, compare the records of all company bank accounts to see if any check kiting is taking place. In addi- tion, it is absolutely fundamental that the bank reconciliation be completed by someone who is completed unassociated with the accounts payable, accounts receivable, or cash receipt ...