A part of your job is monitoring for financial risks. What process would you use for monitoring the risks? And if you identified a risk, what controls and processes did you/would you put into place for mitigation?

While performing the bank reconciliation, you find several unknown transactions, with no pre-existing supporting documentation in the finance system. What steps would you take to reconcile these unknown transactions?

For the following 2 scenarios, please identify and describe the accounting treatment you’d recommend, and why:

1) As part of month end close, you’ve been asked to process a bill for £18,000 related to an annual contract for a new piece of software

2) As part of month-end close, you’ve received email confirmation that an existing customer will be renewing their annual subscription, but has yet to sign their contract

A salesperson has submitted a £220 expense claim (with no supporting documentation, other than a print screen of their credit card statement), for a restaurant bill they incurred while taking out a lead to dinner, to discuss the possibility of them becoming a customer.

The policy is very clear on this matter - client entertainment costs greater than £50 need to be signed off by the Head of Sales PRIOR to any of the costs being incurred (as none of these are ever charged to the customer’s account), and is only applicable to existing customers.

How would you go about addressing this matter?

It's been a busy week and it's now just after lunch time on Friday afternoon. You have 3 things remaining on your “To do” list:

1. Revenue Reconciliation – you’re 1 working day away from month end close, when you find that 3 of the renewals you’re processing journals for, don’t have signed contracts in place, and you need to confirm their status with the Account Manager.

2. Accounts Payable – the VP of Marketing has just sent over 2 urgent, overdue bills (that would require sign off from the CEO given their materiality) that she has promised the vendors will be settled by the end of the day, in order to enable the project to kick off on Monday next week.

3. Accounts Receivable – earlier in the day, a new customer sent over a complicated “New Vendor Setup” form that needs to be completed and sent over to them by the end of the day, in order to enable their Finance teams to pay the invoice you sent earlier in the week.

Imagine you only have time to do 1 of these tasks, which 1 do you choose to do and why?