Anti-Fraud Controls in Payroll, Employee TandE and Expense Reimbursement: Detect and Prevent Before Its Too Late

OVERVIEW

Expense reimbursement fraud—encompassing the myriad forms of employee travel and entertainment (T&E) schemes as well as Purchasing Card (P-Card) fraud—costs organizations hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars per year. According to the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE), expense reimbursement frauds result in a median loss of $26,000 per incident and represent 14.5% of all employee fraud.

While many of these schemes are considered “immaterial”—such as claiming reimbursement for a personal meal ... charging a pay-per-view movie to a business-related hotel bill ... or inflating the cost of a taxi ride—management should not underestimate the cumulative cost of these thefts.

This webinar will summarize the main types of employee T&E and expense reimbursement fraud to be alert of, including several “real life” case studies. It will then explain how to identify the red flags of possible expense reimbursement fraud, offer specific fraud-audit techniques and test for these crimes and conclude with a rundown of proven fraud detection and prevention techniques.

WHY SHOULD YOU ATTEND

In one case alone, a senior executive of a major multinational company stole $500,000 by abusing the organization’s travel and expense policy. While this may not be typical of expense reimbursement fraud, it does illustrate how employees who have the opportunity to exploit weaknesses in your organization’s expense reimbursement processes and procedures can do so.

Moreover, anti-fraud experts agree that expense reimbursement fraud can be among the most difficult types of employee crime to detect and prevent. That is in large part due to the extraordinary variety of ways in which such crimes can be committed.

By attending this webinar, you will learn how vulnerable your organization is to expense reimbursement fraud. You’ll learn about the common and not-so-common ways that these frauds are perpetrated and—most importantly—you’ll learn how to detect the red flags of these schemes, how to audit for them and how to tighten up your controls against them through various fraud detection and prevention techniques.

AREAS COVERED

INTRODUCTION

• Statistical overview of the fraud problem generally, and employee T&E and expense reimbursement specifically
• Who commits fraud
• Why employees commit fraud (The Fraud Triangle)
• Lessons from T&E fraudsters

COMMON TYPES OF EXPENSE REIMBURSEMENT FRAUD TODAY

• Falsifying T&E reimbursement schemes with bogus receipts
• Submitting T&E claims multiple times
• Abuse of corporate/P-card for personal gain
• Claiming for expenses just under the limit requiring approval
• Purchasing more than needed (e.g. office supplies)
• Exploiting AP/Disbursements control weaknesses
• P-Card fraud

RED FLAGS OF AP FRAUD

• Specific red flags of each of the common expense reimbursement frauds
• The fraud risk mitigation cycle
• Implementing an organization-wide system for fraud detection and prevention

FRAUD DETECTION

• How T&E frauds are most often detected
• Additional general detection methods
• Data mining/analytics for fraud detection
• Examples of fraud audit techniques at work

ANTI-FRAUD CONTROLS FOR EXPENSE REIMBURSEMENT FRAUD

• Internal controls and other t&e fraud prevention measures
• Who should manage anti-fraud activities
• Internal controls: dos and don’ts
• General controls: segregation of duties, delegation of authority, background investigation
• Specific expense reimbursement controls and deterrents

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

• Understand the many types of travel, entertainment and internal procurement frauds
• Implement effective expense reimbursement fraud detection techniques and build audit practices to detect red flags of these crimes
• Implement employee expense reimbursement best practices and anti-fraud control strategies for expense reimbursement fraud

WHO WILL BENEFIT

• Internal and external audit professionals
• Accounting and audit practitioners
• HR managers
• Senior financial management seeking to reduce their vulnerability to costly frauds
• Payables specialists
• Procurement managers
• Compliance and ethics managers
• CFO’s/senior financial managers
• Security personnel