7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Helpful for forensic testing using Excel and Access, Jun 21 2011
By Drake Mandrake - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Forensic Analytics: Methods and Techniques for Forensic Accounting Investigations (Hardcover)
I found this to be a helpful book. The data analysis tests in Forensic Accounting can be used as high-level reasonableness tests to determine whether private or public sector data is free of fraud, errors or biases. While the tests can't guarantee that everything is clean and correct, they will detect the larger and more obvious errors. The author starts with some high-level overview tests and then drills deeper into the data to find irregular patterns. The Relative Size Factor tests and the Same-Same-Different test have been used with much success in detecting problems with accounts payable data.
Benford's Law fans will not be disappointed--the book includes four full chapters on Benford's Law and it is also covered in three other chapters. The final chapter on purchasing card fraud has interesting examples of actual fraud, an Excel dashboard, and an example of a real analysis of real company data. The book has tests that will be new and valuable to seasoned forensic accountants as well as some basic tests that will be immediately usable for beginners. If you have Excel or Access and your own data, then you could probably use many of the tests in the book right away. This book shows how to run most of the tests in both programs. It should be useful to forensic accountants, auditors, and other accounting and finance types who work with data.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Forensics for Purchasing Card Administrators, Oct 1 2011
By Robert Notman "Bob" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Forensic Analytics: Methods and Techniques for Forensic Accounting Investigations (Hardcover)
Dr. Nigrini's book on forensic analytics is nothing short of amazing especially for those of us that haven't used statistics or analysis since high school or college. I'll admit that when I first received the book I was disappointed that there was only one chapter (18) that deals specifically with purchasing cards (PCards). However, as I began to read the book I realized that all of the other chapters help you understand your PCard records and are explanation of tools to help you perform analysis.
The book covers using MS Access, Excel and PowerPoint for forensic investigation or presentation of forensic analysis. The author also includes many tests that you can apply to look for fraud (misuse/abuse). You also have access to a website that has a lot of examples and data from the various chapters to help you understand the text.
Reading the book was my first introduction in using Benford's Law and applying it to card data. It was interesting to see my data reviewed with Benford's Law. I haven't attempted to apply the other tests to my data yet, but will as I complete reading the book.
If you are a Purchasing Card Administrator interested in mitigating risk, this is a book that can help you understand how to review the data.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
A very good review of the topic, Mar 5 2012
By Duncan Williamson "Tall Tyke" - Published on Amazon.com
Forensic Analytics: Methods and Techniques for Forensic Accounting Investigations (Wiley Corporate F&A)I bought this book to help me with a course I was about to run on detecting fraud. I know Excel very well, I know Access a bit, I am very familiar with statistics. I have been a fan of Benford's Law for several years and have even had articles on the topic published.
Nevertheless, I knew that Dr Nigrini was one of THE leading lights in this topic and I have to say I was not disappointed. I bought the Kindle version of the book so I have to say that I cannot comment on the layout of the book and so on because Kindles are not the best place to see perfect layouts!
The contents are good and the progression of topics is good and logical. I have to say, however, that personally speaking, I didn't need the information on Access and PowerPoint but I can see why they were included.
I did learn a few things from this systematic study of forensic analytics and was pleased to see Dr Nigrini's views on how to deal with results from a Benford's Law analysis. Learning these things made my own understanding and presentations a little better.
I have to say that I didn't have a lot of time to consider the mantissa arc and Kolmogorov-Smirnoff tests but I liked the correlation test: nice, simple and easy to use and explain.
There is a batch of cases to work on, heating oil sales, stock market information and construction data. There is even a very large database of invoice information to work with (approx 189,000 invoices) that will stretch your Excel resources but which will be useful for anyone wanting to work with a real data set.
Overall I found the explanations nice and clear and for anyone looking for a good introduction to the topic, this is a good start.