Accounting Principles: Fraud, Internal Control, and Cash
Accounting Principles: Fraud, Internal Control, and Cash
Accounting Principles: Fraud, Internal Control, and Cash
Thirteenth Edition
Weygandt Kimmel Kieso
Chapter 8
Fraud, Internal Control,
and Cash
Prepared by
Coby Harmon
University of California, Santa Barbara
Westmont College
Chapter 8
Fraud, Internal Control,
and Cash
Chapter Outline
Learning Objectives
LO 1 Define fraud and the principles of internal control.
LO 2 Apply internal control principles to cash.
LO 3 Identify the control features of a bank account.
LO 4 Explain the reporting of cash.
fraudulent activity.
Chuling Song was an accounts payable clerk for Yanchang Construction. She
prepared and issued checks to vendors and reconciled bank statements. She
perpetrated a fraud in this way: She wrote checks for costs that the company
had not actually incurred (e.g., fake taxes). A supervisor then approved and
signed the checks. Before issuing the check, though, she would “white-out”
the payee line on the check and change it to personal accounts that she
controlled. She was able to conceal the theft because she also reconciled the
bank account. That is, nobody else ever saw that the checks had been altered.
Bobbi Donnelly, the office manager for Mod Fashions' design center, was
responsible for preparing the design center budget and reviewing expense
reports submitted by design center employees. Her desire to upgrade her
wardrobe got the better of her, and she enacted a fraud that involved filing
expense-reimbursement requests for her own personal clothing purchases.
She was able to conceal the fraud because she was responsible for reviewing
all expense reports, including her own. In addition, she sometimes was given
ultimate responsibility for signing off on the expense reports when her boss
was “too busy.” Also, because she controlled the budget, when she submitted
her expenses, she coded them to budget items that she knew were running
under budget, so that they would not catch anyone’s attention.
Ellen Lowry was the desk manager and Josephine Rodriguez was the head of
housekeeping at the Excelsior Inn, a luxury hotel. The two best friends were
so dedicated to their jobs that they never took vacations, and they frequently
filled in for other employees. In fact, Ms. Rodriguez, whose job as head of
housekeeping did not include cleaning rooms, often cleaned rooms herself,
“just to help the staff keep up.” Ellen, the desk manager, provided significant
discounts to guests who paid with cash. She kept the cash and did not register
the guest in the hotel’s computerized system. Instead, she took the room out
of circulation “due to routine maintenance.” Because the room did not show
up as being used, it did not receive a normal housekeeping assignment.
Instead, Josephine, the head of housekeeping, cleaned the rooms during the
guests’ stay.
Helpful Hint
Controls may vary with the risk level of the activity. For example,
management may consider cash to be high risk and maintaining
inventories in the stockroom as low risk. Thus, management would have
stricter controls for cash.
• Physical Controls
Store cash in safes and bank vaults
Limit access to storage areas
Use cash registers or point-of-sale terminals
LO 2 Copyright ©2019 John Wiley & Son, Inc. 29
Cash Controls
Cash Receipts Controls
• Independent Internal Verification
Supervisors count cash receipts daily
Assistant treasurer compares total receipts to
bank deposits daily
• Human Resource Controls
Bond personnel who handle cash
Require employees to take vacations
Conduct background checks
Maker
Payee
Payer
ILLUSTRATION 8.9
Check with remittance advice
ILLUSTRATION 8.10
Bank statement