Appendix 2: SWOT Analysis
Strengths
 All the accounts department staff are full time:
there are few occasions where no one is at the
office.
 The staff with no formal qualifications in
accounting and are willing to study further.
 Despite the high volume of transactions in the
payable section, the accounts package is capable of
handling all of the company’s accounts payable
requirements.
 Payments by BACS and cheques issued to
suppliers have to be countersigned by one of the
directors.
 Most of the shops’ employees are willing to work
overtime.
 the FD as he in only in the business for one
Weaknesses
 The Finance Director not spending
enough time at the office.
 Credit limits to credit customers set at
£4,000 by default to avoid exception reports.
 The weekly manual return from each of
the shops is used to update the accounts
receivable ledger with the credit sales of the
week. The return is filled in by the shop
manager and posted to the head office often
by second-class post.
 The company does not operate a BACS
payment system with its customers.
 Outstanding accounts more than one
month overdue are not being reviewed by
or two days a week. Also, the policy of
passing the details of outstanding debts to
the debt collection agency is rarely followed
because of the same reason.
 Purchase ledger: The company has not
bought a processing package that allows
automated full invoice matching against its
purchase order
 Out of the four directors only the FD is
willing to signed the cheques and BACS
payments to suppliers; the others directors
complained that they were to busy to
undertake this role.
 Stores treating the two floats of cash as
one single fund and making no distinction
between monies used for providing
customers with change and those for
funding the incidental costs of the shop.
 There is often a reconciliation
difference at the end of the month due to
the shop managers having declared their
takings in their daily email to the office, but
not their bankings.
 The company has no formal system in
place for hourly paid employees to sing
in or out when they arrive or leave work.

 2. Opportunities
 Shop staff to be trained: the company would
benefit from advanced IT skills.
 Improving sales by lowering prices
 Accounts staff to receive further training.
Threats
 Effects of the recession/economic
downturn: harder to borrow money from the
banks and they may have to downsize the
business
 Fewer people buying ready-made
sandwiches.
 Redundancies as an effect of the
recession.
 Staff not backing up the system
regularly.
 Competitors lowering the prices.
Appendix 3: Fraud Matrix

Potential fraud Current control Risk to the organisation Recommendation

Credit checking and Formal credit 4- High Only directors or senior

control policies: staff checking and control staff should approve new
could set up a dummy policies are not customers
customer and complied with in
purchase goods for it practice

Payments from credit No control 4-High Payments from credit

customers taken by customers to be paid by
store staff BACS or cheque only.

Cash not banked on a Cheques and cash 5-Very high Cash to be removed from
daily basis increasing kept in tills overnight tills and banked daily
risk of loss from theft (many of the shops
are not sited near a
bank’s branch)
Employees lying about No control 3-Medium To install new system
hours worked at the with ID cards
shop