Forensic auditing is a technique to legally determine whether accounting transactions are in consonance with various accounting, auditing and legal requirements and eventually determine whether any fraud has taken place. Forensic auditing is a blend of accounting, auditing and investigative skills.
Forensic accountants combine knowledge of the law with their accounting skills. They can assess companies, and help companies resolve issues.
In order to perform an investigation on financial statements as well as financial information, forensic auditor need to deeply understanding how accounting record are performed as well as accounting treatments from the normal accounting treatment to the complex accounting treatment.
This is where we come in. With Expertise in both Marine (Shipping) as well as Cost and Chartered Accountants amongst our team, we are able to look deeply into hidden accounting practices, embezzlement or misappropriation of funds, validate against actual invoices and accounts statement or identifying areas of opportunity to save.We believe that ISM Code was brought in to check the ethics, principles and base policies of the 3rd Party Ship Management Companies. Today a number of Ship Owners have their vessels managed by these 3rd Party Management Companies.
We'll give you an example from the crew budgeted heads. Some can be very transparent, some can be manipulated to get the owners to fork out extra outside the budget.
The transparent and fixed budget items could be :- CERTIFICATION
- CLOTHING / UNIFORM
- MEDICALS
- SOCIAL COSTS / WLEFARE FUNDS / ITF OR UNION DUES / PROVIDENT FUND
The manipulative ones are expenses on Travel and indirect Manning costs, such as manning agency charges, bank charges and sometimes the training costs.
So Travel : Ship managements make a lot by using in-house, stated to be “third party” travel agencies. While these do provide an efficient and bankable flexibility of travel, they also charge premiums for keeping that status. In lot of cases, you could possibly get a cheaper air ticket on the same terms, booking directly on the airlines website or travel portals then using them.
So, on one hand the management fee is charged, then manning agency is charged and then the owners may be shelling out for advertising, as well.
Contact us at Shipping@charvick.com for a remote financial audit requirement with Scope of audit, and purpose of engagement. This is to avoid delivery of services below client expectation.
