Review of Financial Accounting & Detecting Fraud

Section One: Financial Accounting Review

• Structure of financial reports
• Regulation of financial reporting
• Financial reporting standards
• The Analysis of Financial Reports
• Detecting bias in accounting numbers
• Qualitative analysis: what people say and what they might mean

Section Two: Creative Accounting

• What is creative accounting and why is it a bad thing?
• Inappropriate accruals, estimates, and excessive provisions
• Identifying premature revenue recognition and fictitious revenue
• Aggressive capitalization
• Creative income statements: classification and disclosure
• Problems with cash flow reporting

Section Three: Forensic Accounting

• The basics of forensic accounting
• The need for Sarbanes-Oxley
• The going concern concept in greater detail
• Cases in which forensic accounting was used
• Off-balance sheet finance
• Introduction to Benford’s Law

Section Four: The Role of the Auditor and Detecting Fraud

• The Role of the Auditor in the Prevention and Detection of Fraud
• Deterring Fraud – The fraud triangle
• The COSO “Internal Control – Integrated Framework,” (COSO Model)
• 20 ways to detect fraud
• Identifying fraud using time series analysis
• Fraud risk assessments
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Section Five: Tools for Detecting Fraud

• Further Statistical Analysis of accounting and other data
• Further application of Benford’s Law
• Chi-Square and Kolmogorov Smirnoff Tests
• Mean Absolute Deviation test
• Mantissa Arc Test
• Second Order and Summation Tests