Company Registration Singapore: Accounting Fraud & Signs of Malicious Accounting

Accounting fraud is a form of business crime that involves improper manipulation of financial records, sales, and revenue expenses. This is often done to make it appear that a business or a company is performing better or worse than it actually is.

It may not appear so, but accounting fraud is almost always being done everywhere. Many business owners or the nominee director, especially those fresh off their company registration, feel that this crime isn’t possible to occur within their company because they either have a small number of employees only or that the person in-charge of their accounting systems is close to them.

But no matter what size of the business or the company is, fraudulent activities are unavoidable if dishonest people are present. Below are the signs that will tell you if someone in your business or company may be planning any malicious accounting procedures:

• Someone from other department or team insists that he takes over responsibilities that he doesn’t usually do, including small tasks like delivering the mail or talking to partners and clients.

• Someone works long hours, over the weekends, or even from home when no one else from the office is still around. Accounting fraud often happens when no one is there to monitor financial tracking and recording.

• Someone complains about and does not follow guidelines strictly, especially accounting procedures. He might even suggest another way of doing them, saying it’s an “easier way” or “a more effective way”.

• It may not always be the case, but sometimes, the staff who seem to be dedicated and hard-working can be a suspect of accounting fraud. Why? Because they make it appear that they are responsible and can be trusted with anything. However, when you start trusting a person with money matters, that’s when they may be likely to commit fraudulent crimes.

As a business owner, you should always keep monitoring, tracking, and auditing, not just your accounting and financial systems, but the behavior of your employees as well, to ensure that your company incorporation or offshore company formation is running smoothly as expected without any fraudulent crimes being committed.