by Jose Jimenez | Nov 21, 2020 | Accounts Payable
By Matthew Albert
Life used to be much more simple when you gave your best friend a few bucks out of the till because they helped you hock lemonade during summer vacation. You knew where every dollar went within your business, and no one had a prayer of stealing your jar of cash out of the fortress of security known as “under your mattress.” Unfortunately, the simple quid pro quo days of childhood only last so long.
Last year, the ACFE found over 2500 cases of fraud among 125 countries that resulted in $3.6 BILLION worth of loss. That’s billion with a “B”. Today, businesses are at risk for fraud from a seemingly endless supply of sources. Some of them are painfully obvious:
- The Nigerian prince with a newfound interest in underwriting.
- The diligent employee who’s stuck in a meeting and needs you to buy gift cards because it’s VERY important.
- The Powerball drawing in Peru that gave your company a win without even purchasing a ticket.
Of course, other sources of fraud are not so obvious on the surface. They’re problems that can be hard to track while they’re wreaking havoc on your business. Nevertheless, it’s these problems that demand your highest awareness. We’re talking about:
- Fake Check and Altered Check Duplicity
- Fake Billing Chicanery
- Expense Account Thievery
- ACH Trickery
- Kickback Skulduggery
Over the next few articles, we’re going to go in-depth on how these problems occur, how you can catch them, and what you can do to minimize the chances of them hurting your business. Today, we’re focusing on fake/altered checks and fake billing–two sources of fraud that can occur outside the walls of your business.
Fake/Altered Checks
Check fraud runs rampant in a number of ways. A person can wrongfully endorse a check, write a check on a closed account, print counterfeit checks, and even use chemicals in highly sophisticated operations to remove important information. (If MacGyver can do it, so can fraudsters.)
Part of the problem lies in the widespread use of checks. More checks=more chances for fraud to occur. In 2018 alone, the Federal Reserve reported 14.5 billion check payments totaling almost $25.8 trillion. While those numbers do show a decrease from 2015, the bottom line is that businesses still write a ton of checks that can be intercepted by criminals just waiting to pounce. If you own a small business, the ACFE says you’re four times more likely to encounter check fraud.
The news is not all bad, though. In fact, smart business can take a series of steps to prevent check fraud. A number of the methods listed below are just good business practices. Some require more work on your part to implement them. Either way, they’re all worth considering.
- Convert payments to ACH and/or similar electronic ways
- Reconcile your accounts as soon as possible
- Use securely connected online reporting systems
- Have separate accounts for transactions–one for paper and one for electronic
- Implement ACH Blocks and Filters
Fake Billing
Over time, as you build trust with vendors, it gets easier and easier for AP employees to approve payments quickly. Time is money, right? Unfortunately, certain vendors abuse this trust by sneaking in fake services and driving up the invoice totals.
The trickiest fraudsters slowly increase the total so that you won’t notice right away. For example, a recurring $100 monthly payment becomes $110 for no reason or for some fake service the vendor didn’t provide. No one in your business cares to look into it because who has time to chase down 10 dollars? As time goes on, $110 slowly creeps up to $120. A few months later, it’s up to $160. By the next year, it’s up to $210. The growth is so slow that you don’t see it until the damage has been done.
It’d be nice if that was the only source of this garbage. Unfortunately, it’s not. You also have to contend with fraudsters impersonating vendors, email hacks (phishing), and fake email domains created by crooks that look similar to your actual vendors’ email addresses. Oh, and if you’re a small business? The ACFE says you’re twice as likely to get duped here.
So what can you do here? As it turns out, plenty. What we’re suggesting here isn’t that difficult, either. It just requires a good detail-oriented team that’s been given sufficient training in the following practices:
- When you receive a bill, email and telephone the vendor to confirm they sent it.
- If a vendor’s contact info appears to be different than what you have on file, attach all original paperwork for your controller so that they can verify the bill is legitimate.
- Keep a “security” question on file that only the vendor would know. Ask them the question via email or over the phone to confirm it’s them.
- KEEP YOUR TEAM IN THE LOOP! The longer you keep a known fraud attempt secret from your trusted employees, the higher the chance they’ll make an unfortunate costly mistake.
Next Up: Expense Account and ACH Fraud
by Jose Jimenez | Mar 7, 2020 | White Paper
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Abstract
This presentation was created to help Oracle Forms Developers transition their current
Oracle Forms skill set to the next version of forms development called Application
Development Framework (ADF). ADF has been around since 2004 but most Oracle
Forms Developers are just now having to learn ADF because Oracle is developing future
applications and products using a new technology stack which supports ADF. ADF is
based on the Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition (J2EE) set of standards. This means that
Oracle Forms Developers will need to transition their existing skill sets and/or acquire
new skill sets to develop applications and forms in a Web based environment. In others
words, Oracle Forms Developers will need to be become Web Developers and this white
paper will help you start your journey into becoming a Web Developer via ADF.
In order to build ADF applications, Oracle has provided a new integrated development
environment (IDE) called JDeveloper. JDeveloper is similar to Oracle Forms in that its
purpose is to simplify application development by providing a visual and declarative
approach to building your application or form. Unlike the Oracle Forms tool which can
build Oracle Forms applications, JDeveloper includes a development environment that
supports SQL, PL/SQL, Java, XML, HTML, JavaScript, BPEL, and PHP. Since
JDeveloper is a multi-purpose IDE tool, you will be intimidated by the layout, menu
options, profile options and wizards, as compared to the existing E-Business Suite
environment where there is a separate IDE for each Oracle Forms, Oracle Reports, Oracle
Workflow and XML Gateway.
From my experience, some of your Oracle Forms skill sets can transition very easily
while others will be a challenge. In addition, there are several new skills to learn and
based on your past experience and/or education with Web Development, the learning
curve can be fairly short but in most cases it will require an extended amount of effort.
Remember when you first started developing in Oracle Forms, it took only a few days to
build a simple form but it took you months or years to master it. The same can be applied
to building ADF forms and applications. In fact, it will take longer to master ADF
because there are hundreds of more components and services to learn.
This white paper will highlight the skill sets required to build your ADF application,
steps required to set up your development environment, basic navigation of the Oracle
JDeveloper software, building an ADF application with comparison to Oracle Form
development and provide some understanding on how to deploy an ADF application.
Objective
- What are the challenges with transitioning from Oracle Forms to Oracle ADF?
- How to learn the required programming skill set to build ADF applications?
- What are the basic ADF concepts?
- Provide side by side comparisons between Oracle Forms and Oracle ADF.
- Provide links to relevant websites explaining key concepts.
Author: Tom Korbecki
by Jose Jimenez | Mar 7, 2020 | White Paper
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Abstract
This presentation will explain my journey from an Oracle EBS Forms Developer to an
Oracle ADF Pages Developer. My journey starts as an experienced Oracle Forms
Developer that is starting a new Oracle ADF application with no knowledge of Oracle
ADF “skill set” and ends with supporting an ADF application. Prior to starting this new
Oracle ADF application, I had attended some formal Java education training classes, but
that was ten years ago so I only remember concepts.
This white paper will highlight the skill sets required to build your ADF application, the steps required to set up your development environment, basic navigation of the Oracle JDeveloper software, creating an ADF application in comparison to Oracle Form development, and finally deploying that application in a WebLogic /Oracle EBS environment.
Objective
- What are the challenges with transitioning from Oracle Forms to Oracle ADF?
- How to learn the required programming skillset to build ADF applications?
- What are the basic ADF concepts?
- Provide side-by-side comparisons between Oracle Forms and Oracle ADF.
- How to deploy an application in a Weblogic / Oracle EBS environment?
- Provide links to relevant websites explaining key concepts.
Author: Tom Korbecki
by Jose Jimenez | Mar 7, 2020 | White Paper
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Topics covered
- Generate reports in Character Mode for WYSIWYG
- How functions work within a report
- Are there pro’s/con’s to using multiple queries vs. a single query with joins in a report?
- How best to manage groups of data so that little or no intervention is needed to the report layout.
- Best approach to adding an additional field to a report layout.
- Layout navigation – Secrets to moving or centering objects.
- Layout (grouping, breaks, use of different formats, page setups)
- Creating and dropping temp tables in reports. Doing massive amounts of “setup” queries before the reports can be generated. Or, failing that, calling a report from PL/SQL.
- Advanced Topics
Author: Tom Korbecki
by Jose Jimenez | Mar 7, 2020 | White Paper
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Abstract
This presentation will discuss techniques for extending standard Advanced Pricing functionality to integrate with custom applications. An overview of the Advanced Pricing module, using the PRICE_REQUEST API, mapping attributes to custom data sources, and use of GET_CUSTOM_PRICE will be discussed.
Objective
Oracle Application’s Advanced Pricing (QP) module is a flexible, extendable module that provides a common source for setting up rules to derive prices. This paper will define key components of the Advanced Pricing module, present methods and identify components to extend aspects of the module to custom data and discuss the risks and rewards of customization.
Author: Chris Herdic
