3-Way Match Part 1: Delivered as ordered? – Here’s how to find out!

Our topic today looks at a “classic” in the area of internal controls in purchasing: the 3-Way Match. The 3-Way Match as a control assumes that order quantities, incoming goods quantities and quantities invoiced by the supplier must correspond. As usual, we want to take a data-oriented approach. So I’ll be showing you how you […]
The madness of exchange rate fraud in SAP

“Two things can drive a person mad: jealousy and the study of exchange rates.” Frank Pöpsel, German journalist (“Capital”) (Translated from the German) SAP remains very true to the spirit of Frank Pöpsel’s words by surprising us with a particular scenario relating to exchange rates that we would like to present to you here today. […]
Cash is King – 3 steps for finding payments made “by roundabout means”

Disbursements in SAP should follow strictly defined processes in accounting. A good internal control system can only be based on a well-defined process. Since outgoing payments have a direct effect on the assets of every company, every auditor – and of course every accounting manager too – should have a major interest in ensuring a […]
Overdelivery made easy

You pay for what you ordered! That’s usually the simple rule. However, some companies place so many orders that it is difficult to keep track of all of them and the SAP system is there to help ensure that vendors do not deliver more than was actually ordered. In this blog post, you can find […]
When the cat might as well have eaten the balance sheet

In fact, when reading the cases described below, you would probably not be surprised if even some cats would prefer to pull the covers back up over their heads again. Still, the following scandals from the recent past show that balance sheet manipulation is by no means a phenomenon of the past and one company […]
How to discover dubious posting structures in SAP

In today’s blog post, we are going to take a look at how to identify “dubious” posting structures within SAP’s financial accounting. I will show you how to quickly find posting structures in SAP and how to know which ones you should perhaps take a closer look at, because they do not meet the usual […]
Balance sheet cosmetics or manipulation?

Balance sheet manipulations have made quite an impact in the media in recent years with cases like Enron and WorldCom. But, beyond that, there has been a series of inconsistencies in the more recent past that have affected almost every industry. Recent cases include the Serie A in Italy, where two clubs are currently threatened […]
The dilemma of the weekend

In a previous series, we have already discussed the risk of postings at the weekend and demonstrated how postings of this type can be identified in SAP. However, we did not take into account that not all weekends are the same. These days, a large number of companies have units to be audited abroad, or conduct […]
Is someone giving your sales revenues a “haircut”?

Giving sales revenues a “haircut” is often a way of helping managing directors and sales managers when their targets are slipping away from them. We look at this specific pattern of manipulation of sales revenues and how you can identify it in your SAP data. The sales revenue “haircut” with no effect on net income […]
3 data analyses for auditing the payment program in SAP

In our last blog post, we provided you with a general overview of some of the peculiarities of the payment program in SAP. This time round, we are going to look at things in more detail and have prepared 3 data analyses that you can use to audit the payment program in SAP. But before we […]