What Usually Is Accounting Fraud?
Accounting fraud is a intentional in addition to wrong manipulation of the recording of sales revenue and/or expenses in order to make a company’s profit performance show better than it actually is. Some things that companies do that can constitute fraud are:
–Not listing prepaid expenses or other incidental assets
–Not showing specific classifications of current assets and/or liabilities
–Collapsing short- and long-term debt into one amount.
Over-recording sales revenue is usually the most conventional practice of accounting fraud. A Small Business Accounting Software business may dispatch products to customers that they have not prepared, knowing that those customers will generally return the products after the end of the year. Until the returns are actually made, the business records the shipments as if they generally were actual sales. Or a business may engage in channel stuffing. It provides products to dealers or final customers that they really don’t feel like, but business makes deals on the side that provide incentives and special privileges if generally the dealers or customers don’t make an objection to taking premature delivery of the products. A Small Business Accounting Software business may also delay recording products that generally have been returned by customers to stay away from recognizing these offsets against sales revenue in the current year
The other means a business commits accounting fraud is essentially by under-recording expenses, such as not recording depreciation expense. Or a business could choose not to record all of its cost of goods sold expense fore the sales made during a period. This actually would make the gross margin higher, but the business’s inventory asset would normally include products that generally are not in inventory because they’ve been delivered to customers.
A business might also choose not to record asset losses that should be recognized, such as uncollectible accounts receivable, or it might not write down inventory under the lower of cost or market rule. A Small Business Accounting Software business might also not record the full amount of the liability for an expense, making that liability understated in the company’s balance sheet. Its profit, therefore, would be overstated.
Krishna Sri is a professional software developer,now get Small Business Accounting Software at affordable packages,visit Accounting Software for more details
September 8, 2010 | Posted by Krishna Sri
Categories:
Tags:
