The following misstatements are included in the accounting records of Lathen Manufacturing Company:
1. Joe Block and Frank Demery take turns "punching in" for each other every few days. The absent employee comes in at noon and tells his foreman that he had car trouble or some other problem. The foreman does not know that the employee is getting paid for the time.
2. The foreman submits a fraudulent time card for a former employee each week and delivers the related payroll cheque to the employee's house on the way home from work. They split the amount of the paycheque.
3. Employees often overlook recording their hours worked on job-cost tickets as required by the system. Many of the client's contracts are on a cost-plus basis.
4. Direct labour was unintentionally charged to Job 620 instead of Job 602 by the payroll clerk when he keyentered the labour distribution sheets. Job 602 was completed and the costs were expensed in the current year, whereas Job 620 was included in work-in-process.
5. The payroll clerk prepares a cheque to the same nonexistent person every week when he enters payroll transactions in the computer system, which also records the amount in the payroll journal. He submits it along with all other payroll cheques for signature. When the cheques are returned to him for distribution, he takes the cheque and deposits it in a special bank account bearing that person's name.
6. In withholding payroll taxes from employees, the computer operator deducts $0.50 extra federal income taxes from several employees each week and credits the amount to his own employee earnings record.
7. The payroll clerk manually prepares payroll cheques but often forgets to record one or two cheques in the computer-prepared payroll journal.
REQUIRED
a. For each misstatement, state a control that should have prevented it from occurring on a continuing basis.
b. For each misstatement, state a substantive audit procedure that could uncover it.