Cook the Books and Book the Ledgers - Part 4

 

Collection Agencies indulge in a practise where they approach 'Near Overdue' account members, collect Cheques from them, bank the Cheques towards the end of the month just to postpone the reporting of their Account as Overdue and then as a 'fait accompli' the Cheque bounces in the first few days of the ensuing month.

 

This deliberate attempt to circumvent the 'Overdue Account Reporting' can be detected in IDEA Software as below -

 

We first need to obtain three data files to execute this test in IDEA.

 

(a) List of Near Overdue Accounts for the Current Month

 

(b) List of Cheques deposited in the Current Month

 

(c) List of Cheques bounced in the ensuing Month.

 

The first step in IDEA would be to extract all Cheques deposited in the Current month from say 25th to 31st using the criteria @betweendate(ChequeDepositDate, "20180925", "20180930") - as an example to illustrate.

 

In the second step in IDEA would be to compare the List of Near Overdue Accounts with the List of Cheques deposited in the last few days of the current month using Compare. The common matching key field would be the Account Code.

 

Moving on to the third step the Accounts having both an Overdue and Cheque deposit in the last few days of the current month can be extracted using Direct Extraction.

 

Finally the file from the third step above can be matched with the List of Cheques bounced in the ensuing month using Join in IDEA with the matching key field being the Account Code.

 

The final step will throw up the required result of Cheque Bounces for Near Overdue Accounts.

 

This activity could be converted into a Macro in IDEA and run every month to have a special watch-list on Accounts which are appearing routinely in successive months.

 

Our next post will look at Red-Flags in Employee Travel Claims.

 

Best Regards

 

Group Admin Team