Many organizations, including non-profits, use QuickBooks® as a cost-effective solution to manage their accounting processes. However, the software’s capabilities extend beyond organizing and streamlining accounting needs. QuickBooks also can assist with fraud detection. Here’s an overview of the software’s fraud detection and prevention features:

Transaction Audit Trails
QuickBooks creates audit trails that capture user activities. This can help your organization identify unauthorized changes. The audit trail includes:

• The transaction date
• The user’s name
• The type of change

Administrators can apply filters to audit log data that can help evaluate what’s happening and determine whether further analysis is required.

Trend Detection & Analysis
QuickBooks can generate accounts receivable and accounts payable aging reports to identify unusual balances. Creating periodic and ad-hoc financial statements can help uncover sudden changes or irregularities in revenue, expenses, and cash flow. Unexplained anomalies can foreshadow asset misappropriation and financial misstatement schemes.

Exception Reporting
Exception reports can be used to flag transactions that deviate from established patterns or thresholds. Customized reports can focus on specific areas of concern, such as duplicate payments, unusual expense categories, voided transactions, and vendor payments. QuickBooks also makes it easier to perform bank reconciliations to detect discrepancies between bank and company records that can signal fraud.

User Roles & Access
Controlling access to data and limiting a user’s ability to engage in certain transactions is a crucial component of an effective internal control system. QuickBooks allows organizations to assign predefined and customized user access. Simply put, by limiting user access rights, your organization can reduce the likelihood of fraud happening.

Fraud Awareness
In general, QuickBooks streamlines the detection, reporting, and investigation of potential fraud. In turn, this creates a culture of fraud awareness that filters from the accounting department to the rest of the organization — and demonstrates that management is watching out for dishonest behavior. Proactive managers can thwart would-be fraudsters by reducing perceived opportunities for fraud to happen, thereby reducing the organization’s potential for losses.

More Than An Accounting Solution
QuickBooks has built-in capabilities that make it a valuable tool for detecting and preventing fraud. Contact us for help using the functionality embedded in the software, adopting a proactive approach to loss prevention, and fostering a culture of fraud awareness. If you unearth suspicious behaviors, our accounting team also can conduct a formal forensic accounting investigation.