Forensic Accounting is a technique for examining accounting records, financial statements, and other related financial records. The results of the investigation is mainly applicable for legal assistance and dispute resolution.
This job requires technical skills in accounting, research, and legal affairs. The investigation covers specific areas such as fraud, crime, insurance claims, and shareholder disputes.
Surveys and validations typically conducted on the company’s financial statements, accounting, and other relevant documents, data, and information related to the subject of the survey.
Common procedures are financial statement analysis, computer assistance, support document research, research, and interviews. This engagement involves professionals with professional experience, accounting standards expertise, and legal background.
Forensic Accounting examines the financial history of an individual or company to track assets and transactions. Through hands-on experience and education, court accountants learn how to identify and analyze patterns and trends in financial datasets using a wide range of analytical tools. A useful belief in forensic coursework is Benford’s Law, theorized by physicist Frank Benford in 1938. According to this theory, in lists and other statistical tables, the number 1 tends to occur with a probability of about 30%, but with the existing 9 digits, the expected probability is 11.1%.
Types
Why Forensic Accounting?
Forensic accounting is essential not only for having special skills and training in the examination and expertise of accounting records, but also for evidence that has proved to play an important role in judicial decision making. This job is quite different from auditors and cannot replace them.
As you know, auditors perform tests on accounting records against accounting standards such as US GAAP and IFRS.
Their responsibility is not to investigate and quantify the fraud that has occurred in the company. Also, the evidence found by the auditor may not be used by the court. However, the evidence found by forensic accounting may be used by the court as professional evidence.
For example, the FBI also has a forensic accounting team working for them to investigate accounting-related issues.
Interested in learning about similar topics? Here are a few hand-picked blogs for you!
What are Accounting Principles?