Case Study Background

You work as an internal auditor for Oklahoma State University $($OSU$).$ You were asked to perform an audit of the purchasing cards $($P$-$cards$)$ that are used on campus.

P$-$cards are a business credit card that some employees are permitted to use to purchase necessary goods and services. If employees agree to certain rules, they can then use a P$-$card to make appropriate business purchases rather than using their own credit card. This allows the employee to avoid spending personal funds and seeking reimbursement. It also provides the business with greater control because the business can institute internal controls to limit types of purchases and avoid inefficient and fraudulent transactions. Organizations also can track spending using detailed P$-$card records provided by the credit card companies.

You have been assigned the task of auditing all of OSU's P$-$card transactions for $2014.$ To perform this audit, you received a file of all P$-$card transactions for the entire state of Oklahoma $($the state collects all transactions for state and higher education institutions$).$ This file will be described more in Part II of the case study instructions, below.

The purpose of this case is to help develop your analytical mindset as a fraud examiner$/$forensic accountant.

An analytics mindset is the ability to: