The report will be analyzing the whether the Bucks Phyz Company requires to issues corporate credit cards for its clients and whether the issuance of corporate credit cards will help in the operations of the business. The report in this case study is being presented from the view point of accountant of Bucks Phyz. The report will be analyzing the potential weakness of the internal control structure of the company and will be suggesting a strategy which can improve the internal control of the business when the strategy is implemented (Almeida, KIM & Kim, 2015).
Bucks Phyz is a medium sized company which has a annual turnover of $ 2.5 million. The purpose of this assignment is that being the accountant of the company, the sales process is to be reviewed which will be done considering the interviews of the staffs of sales department of the company. The business has been affected by frauds, scams and changing environment of the company. The company has also been affected changing in the key personnel of the company (Zikmund et al. 2013). This report will provide recommendations which will be improving the internal control of the company and also analyze the need of corporate credit cards in business.
There has been change in the operations of the Bucks Phyz which also includes the sales department. The sales process has implemented a new pricing tool which can effectively calculate the prices of the offers that are sent out by managers. This new tool considers the cost structure of the company and EBIT targets of the company which the old tool completely lacked (Wu, Chen & Olson, 2014). The authorization policy of the company the new pricing tool lies with the head of sales and managers and finance director. The other issues which exist in the sales process ios that the standard contract template which is currently used by the company is up to the mark in terms of quality. The credit check policy of the company includes checking of credit worthiness of the clients on the basis of credit ratings as provided by credit rating agencies.
Source: (Author Made)
The analysis of sales process has revealed the following weakness which are discussed below:
|
Sales Process |
Internal Control Weakness |
Impact |
Recommendation |
|
Data Entry Process |
Implementation of the new customers into the operative system of the company is done by Alfred and Joy. The area of risk is the creation of pricing template against the name of a new customer which requires manual data entry and also the system review is also heavy which increases the chances of data being misplaced or misstated (Hammersley, Myers & Zhou, 2012). |
The pricing template introduction for a new client of the business and the lack of maintenance of the same in the system can cause the business to lose data of important customers of the business (Cheng, Dhaliwal & Zhang, 2013). The company will then not be able to keep record of the situation which in turn may results in losses for the company. The free access to the ERP system may result in fraudulent activities by altering major customer’s data. The billing system of the company should be designed in such a way that the clients are able to relate with the same. |
The company must segregate the duties among the employees of the business. In order words a particular employee must be given the responsibility of data entry and management of the system where the data is to be entered. This will reduce the chances of misplacing important customer’s data (Banerjee & Canals-Cerdá, 2012). The company also needs to implement a new or make changes to the current billing system that the management currently employs. |
|
New pricing tool |
The new pricing tool which has been introduced in the Bucks Phyz requires the managers to be properly trained in order to successfully implement it and also work with the same (Feng, McVay & Skaife, 2014). |
Improper training of employees may cause major calculations errors of prices that are sent out. This will impact the business tremendously. |
The company needs to properly train its employees in managing and utilizing the pricing tool. |
|
Authorization Policy |
The authorization process which the managers have to follow in case of following the new pricing tool is not effectively followed by the management, even the head of the sales admits that in certain situations the authorizations can be ignored. |
The standardised process of authorization policy if not followed strictly will provide scope for the managers to indulge in fraudulent activities. These managers can send offer to clients at a higher price than usual. |
The management has the option to either introduce a new standardized process or follow strictly the established standardized process with rare room for exceptions. |
|
The company credit check policy need to be implemented for every customers and the policy should be strictly followed by the management in order to avoid any major losses (Siddiqi, 2012). |
Similarly if the credit checking process is not strictly followed by the management then it will result in major losses for the company as customers are not always genuine. |
The checking of the credit worthiness of a customer should be made mandatory. The system should be designed in such a way that without checking the credit worthiness of a particular customer no deals would be permitted (Bakshi & Chowdhury, 2013). |
|
|
Employee code |
Another weakness which can be identified is that there is no presence of employee behaviour code which can control and also built relationship between the employees. |
If proper behavioural code is not established by the management then this gives scope to the employees to indulge in fraudulent activity. |
The Company needs to introduced a new behavioural code which needs to be followed by everyone. |
Corporate credit cards are cards which are used to make payments. Many of the companies provide their employees with corporate credit cards which can be used to make personal payment, handle business related expenses and is quite useful when the employee is travelling (Agarwal et al. 2014).
|
Risks of Credit Cards |
Impacts |
Internal Control |
|
The basic risks which the company faces while using credit cards is the unauthorised sanction of money from business which might be due fraudulent activity or error. The management of Bucks Phyz can avoid such a risk by appointing a team of employee who will be responsible for looking after and monitoring the transactions by credit cards. |
The introduction of corporate credit cards in Bucks Phyz will be of great advantage to the business (Doppelt, 2017). The most basic advantage associated with the introduction of corporate credit cards is that the company can mitigate some of the risks which the business is associated with. Besides this, it will be effective in the payments which the company has to make to its suppliers or employees and this will reduce the cost of operations which the businesses incur |
The management of Bucks Phyz should issues corporate credit cards to only the key personnel of the business who are responsible for the key areas of the business. The finance managers of the Bucks Phyz should be provided with credit cards. The internal control of the business should be such that the credit cards are allowed to only key personnel of the business. |
Reference
Agarwal, S., Chomsisengphet, S., Mahoney, N., & Stroebel, J. (2014). Regulating consumer financial products: Evidence from credit cards. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 130(1), 111-164.
Almeida, H., KIM, C. S., & Kim, H. B. (2015). Internal capital markets in business groups: Evidence from the Asian financial crisis. The Journal of Finance, 70(6), 2539-2586.
Bakshi, C. C., & Chowdhury, P. R. (2013). U.S. Patent Application No. 13/560,655.
Banerjee, P., & Canals-Cerdá, J. J. (2012). Credit risk analysis of credit card portfolios under economic stress conditions.
Cheng, M., Dhaliwal, D., & Zhang, Y. (2013). Does investment efficiency improve after the disclosure of material weaknesses in internal control over financial reporting?. Journal of Accounting and Economics, 56(1), 1-18.
Doppelt, B. (2017). Leading change toward sustainability: A change-management guide for business, government and civil society. Routledge.
Feng, M., Li, C., McVay, S. E., & Skaife, H. (2014). Does ineffective internal control over financial reporting affect a firm’s operations? Evidence from firms’ inventory management. The Accounting Review, 90(2), 529-557.
Gallemore, J., & Labro, E. (2015). The importance of the internal information environment for tax avoidance. Journal of Accounting and Economics, 60(1), 149-167.
Hammersley, J. S., Myers, L. A., & Zhou, J. (2012). The failure to remediate previously disclosed material weaknesses in internal controls. Auditing: A Journal of Practice & Theory, 31(2), 73-111.
Siddiqi, N. (2012). Credit risk scorecards: developing and implementing intelligent credit scoring (Vol. 3). John Wiley & Sons.
Wu, D. D., Chen, S. H., & Olson, D. L. (2014). Business intelligence in risk management: Some recent progresses. Information Sciences, 256, 1-7.
Zikmund, W. G., Babin, B. J., Carr, J. C., & Griffin, M. (2013). Business research methods. Cengage Learning.
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