Examining Documentation Tools for Audit and Forensic Accounting Investigations

Abstract

This study examines some of the documentation tools and techniques that forensic accountants, internal auditors, external auditors, and others can use to document accounting and financial reporting systems under investigation. While prior research has addressed these items piecemeal, this study is the first to incorporate them, along with current related research and theoretical foundation, and relate them in aggregate to the work of forensic accountants, internal auditors, external auditors, and others. Inputs, processes, and outputs of modern accounting and financial reporting systems are often difficult to fully grasp, with weaknesses obscured by the complexities of the system. These weaknesses make a system vulnerable to fraudsters, embezzlers, hackers, and others who will take advantage of system weaknesses to perpetrate financial fraud, embezzlement, or other financial crimes. Documentation tools and techniques examined in this study will be useful to forensic accountants, internal auditors, external auditors, and others for identifying the components, processes, and potential weaknesses of accounting and financial reporting systems.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 11 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.