Fraud Lens for Accountants: Expenses, Payroll, Cash and Tax (Course Id 2615)

This comprehensive course is essential for finance professionals seeking to fortify their organization's defenses against financial wrongdoing. Uncover the alarming statistics: organizations lose approximately 5% of their revenue to fraud annually, with a significant portion occurring in routine, high-volume payroll processing, expense reimbursements, petty cash handling, and daily tax transactions.

This practical course equips you with essential skills to understand modern fraud schemes, spot red flags and subtle signs, select the most effective controls, and protect your organization's assets throughout payroll cycles, expense reimbursement processes, cash handling, and tax compliance. You'll master how to detect and prevent common fraud schemes in these critical financial areas, which are particularly vulnerable to both internal manipulation and external threats.

Through real-world scenarios and practical applications, you'll learn:

• Payroll Fraud Prevention: Identify ghost employees, falsified hours, unauthorized pay raises, and other schemes threatening your payroll integrity and employee trust
• Expense Reimbursement Protection: Recognize mischaracterized expenses, fictitious claims, duplicate submissions, and other clever techniques
• Cash Controls Implementation: Design and implement easy but powerful preventive and detective controls specifically tailored for petty cash handling
• Tax Fraud Detection: Spot sales tax/VAT evasion, payroll tax skimming, and other transactional tax schemes before they hit your organization

The course includes four valuable downloadable tools you can immediately apply in your daily work:

• Payroll Red-Flag Cards: Quick reference guide for identifying the eight most common fraud indicators in payroll processing
• Expense & Cash Red-Flag Cards: Eight warning signs of potential fraud in expense reports and petty cash transactions
• Tax Red-Flag Cards: Eight key indicators of transactional tax fraud that demand immediate attention
• Rapid Dilemma Tree for Daily Transactions: Four quick questions for making sound ethical decisions when facing questionable situations

Whether you're a CPA, accounting manager, controller, internal auditor, or finance professional, this course will enhance your ability to safeguard your organization's financial integrity throughout daily transaction processes. Join us to develop your "fraud lens" and become a stronger defender against fraud attempts in your payroll, expense, cash, and tax operations.

Please Note: These Fraud CPE credits satisfy the California Board of Accountancy (CBA) fraud requirement.

Course Learning Objectives

1. Identify the most common fraud schemes in payroll, expense reimbursements, petty cash, and transactional tax processes.
2. Recognize key red flags that indicate possible payroll, expense, or tax fraud, using the provided Red-Flag Cards as a reference.
3. Implement practical preventive and detective controls to mitigate fraud risks in payroll, expenses, cash and tax operations.
4. Apply ethical decision-making tools—including the Rapid Dilemma Tree for Daily Transactions.
5. Leverage technology and automation (RPA/AI) to augment fraud prevention and detection in daily transactions.
6. Understand what is your real-life exposure to fraud in payroll, expense reimbursement, cash management and taxes.

Section 1
Introduction - Why Ethics in Transactions Matter

• Understand the significance of ethics in daily non-invoice transactions by examining fraud statistics.
• Develop a "fraud lens" perspective for identifying ethical issues in payroll, expense, cash and tax transactions.
• Learn to utilize practical fraud detection tools including the Rapid Dilemma Tree and Red-Flag Reference Cards to guide ethical decision-making in everyday accounting situations.

Section 2
Payroll Fraud Prevention

• Identify common payroll fraud schemes like ghost employees and falsified hours, and understand how they are concealed.
• Recognize warning signs of payroll fraud and use the Payroll Red-Flag Card to spot potential issues.
• Apply controls and best practices to prevent payroll fraud through proper segregation of duties and approval processes.
• Understand automation tools like RPA and AI for strengthening payroll controls.

Section 3
Expense Reimbursement and Petty Cash Fraud

• Understand common fraud schemes in expense reimbursements and petty cash, including how employees falsify expenses or steal cash.
• Learn to identify red flags that often indicate expense or petty cash fraud, with connections to the downloadable Expenses & Petty Cash Red-Flag Card.
• Discover effective controls to prevent and detect expense reimbursement and petty cash fraud.
• Explore how automation and technology help prevent and detect expense and petty cash fraud, complementing traditional manual controls.

Section 4
Tax Fraud in Daily Operations

• Understand the significance of common fraud schemes involving transactional taxes (including sales tax, GST, VAT, payroll deductions, transfer pricing).
• Develop a "fraud lens" perspective to identify red flags that suggest possible tax-related fraud in a company's transactions.
• Learn to utilize practical controls and practices to prevent or detect transactional tax fraud.
• Apply automation and technology tools to aid in tax compliance and fraud detection, complementing the manual controls discussed.