The Bottom Line January 2011 Volume 3 ,Issue 2 Inside This Issue: PRESIDENT’S CORNER
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San Gabriel Valley Chapter The Bottom Line January 2011 Volume 3 ,Issue 2 Inside this issue: PRESIDENT’S CORNER President’s Corner 1 Happy have planned in the coming Thanks for your Upcoming Events 2 New months. continued support and Year! membership in the IIA The very essence of our San Gabriel Valley. Your Attendance 2 chapter success rests upon Counts! the dedication and Please attend our local January 19th. Flyer 3 commitment each of you meetings or seminars to The planning is underway offer to the profession. make valuable for another successful Chapter Business 4 connections with fellow year! One of the amazing As an audit professional, I Internal Audit benefits of chapter appreciate the networking professionals and to November 2010 CAP 4 membership is taking at each meeting to become share information. If Report advantage of the better acquainted with there is anything we can learning opportunities you. be doing to better serve From Our Members 5 through professional your needs please let networking and quality I am continually amazed at Where in San Gabriel 6 me or one of the officers seminars. the enormous support Valley each of you provides in know. We had a whirlwind start helping our chapter remain Job Opportunities 6 to the year with the 2010 the very success that it is! Western Regional Sangeeta Patel, MSc, Thank you for all the hard From TheIIA.org 6 Conference, September CPA, CIA roundtable luncheon work, support and More Chapter News 7 meeting, October commitment by the Board IIA San Gabriel Valley luncheon meeting and of Governors, Officers, and Chapter President Committee members to December holiday achieve the gold status Board Members and 8 luncheon. In addition, Officers we had a 2 day Fraud once again this year. This Seminar. I hope that you will be IIA San Gabriel Institute of Internal Auditors Valley’s 7th gold we only San Gabriel Valley Chapter have enjoyed the year so far and look forward to need 3 more gold status to PO Box 1532 achieve platinum status. Sierra Madre, CA 91025 the many events that we Your Attendance Counts Hope to see you at the next meeting. Upcoming Events Internal audits are conducted all over the Susan Egerman, Membership Chair WEDNESDAY San Gabriel Valley in diverse January 19th. organizations that vary in purpose, size, From: http://www.theiia.org/intAuditor/ 11:30 – 1:00, Pasadena’s complexity, and structure. While fraud-findings/ Women’s City Club differences may affect the practice of The Case of the Embezzling CEO Chapter Luncheon internal auditing, SGV Chapter internal KPMG audit organizations conform to the same ITWorld re ports that the former chief Data Analytics IIA Standards. The Standards provide a information officer at a U.S. automobile framework for performing audits and are processing company has been sentenced 2-Day Seminar important to our success as internal to prison for embezzling US $500,000 by Day 1—Ethics & Regulatory auditing professionals. faking expense reports and reselling Requirements for CA CPA (6 company equipment. The man was also One of the primary goals of our Chapter is hours) (Subject to change) sentenced in 1996 for stealing US to help our members fulfill their Day 2—Performance $200,000 while managing the Indiana Measures (8 hours) professional responsibilities. At our SGV audio shop. Time & Place: TBD (please Chapter monthly meetings we share check Events in our Website knowledge and information about the Lessons Learned for more information) internal auditing, the Standards, and This real-life situation reinforces the WEDNESDAY professional best practices. We provide importance of conduction criminal February 16th. members with professional training and background checks, particularly on people 11:30 – 1:00, Pasadena’s development opportunities that address responsible for handling cash or Women’s City Club current and emerging trends. receivables. It also demonstrates that not Chapter Luncheon This year our Chapter will be promoting all of the fraud triangle conditions – KPMG pressure, rationalization, and this important goal by rewarding those opportunity—need to be present for fraud Contract Compliance who attend monthly meetings with a to occur. For example, there was no WEDNESDAY raffle opportunity. Every time you attend evidence of rationalization in this March 16th. a monthly meeting, your name will be situation. In fact, the perpetrator 11:30 – 1:00, Pasadena’s entered into the raffle for two Kindles. appeared to know that what he was doing Women’s City Club Each Kindle will contain a copy of our IIA was wrong. There were no obvious signs Chapter Luncheon Standards and professional practices. of financial or other pressure (e.g. Shawn D. Stewart—Grant The more times you attend, the more gambling problems or medical costs). Thornton chances you will have to win a Kindle. However, when controls are weak, some MARCH Networking Event The raffles will be held at our March people cannot refrain from taking (TBD) Networking (TBD) event and the June advantage o the situation. Risk Based Auditing Luncheon meeting. April 2011 Auditors may not be able to address the rationalization or pressure components of Back to Basics 3-day seminar A big Thank You goes to our sponsor, Robert Half, for providing one of the the fraud triangle, but they can reduce the TBD (check our website!) Kindles. opportunity. By verifying the control framework, internal auditing can reduce the opportunities available for fraud. Page 2 Page 3 CHAPTER BUSINESS September Meeting $20.6 billion bank with 133 branches in detection and prevention of fraud. By Jan Biferno the United States, two branches in Hong Our September meeting was attended by Kong and a subsidiary bank in China December Meeting over 30 people, and was an interesting The Wednesday, December 1st change in presentation format. Instead of October Meeting meeting focused on Leadership, the usual single presenter, we had two The Wednesday, October 20th meeting and was presented by Jill and Steve speakers in a lively discussion on the audi- was presented by David Merriam, Senior Morris from Choice Works, Inc. This tor of the future as our guest speakers re- Manager at PriceWaterhouseCoopers, was a fun meeting, and it gave at- sponded to questions posed by Ruthe Hol- LLP. The program topic: Increasing Prof- tendees a chance to focus not only den as the moderator. In addition to ques- its and Mitigating Risk: Assessing vulner- on the negative, but also in the posi- tions posed by Ruthe, the speakers re- ability to fraud, corruption, and other mis- tive side of any situation. sponded to questions from the audience. conduct, was successfully addressed by Our two guest speakers were Megan Scott- the speaker. January Meeting Kakures and Albert Lau. Megan Scott- The Wednesday, January 19th. Data Kakures is vice president of Edison Interna- November—Fraud Symposium Analytics Meeting will be presented tional (EIX) and Southern California Edison The two-day seminar at Metropolitan by Kristinne Uy Cañas, and Daniel (SCE) and general auditor of EIX, SCE and Water District of Southern California fo- Hu, from KPMG. Edison Mission Group. She has held this cused on providing quality professional They will talk about the require- position since April 2007. She is the head education on fraud related issues, and it ments, Methods and tools, and will of the 80 person Audit Services Depart- gave participants a chance to network present a Case Study. ment, which is comprised of three divisions with other professionals; all at a reason- – financial and contract, operating and con- able price. The different tracks covered a Chapter Members, join us and sulting, and information technology. Albert variety of topics ranging from Fraud in stay in touch with the IIA SGV Lau is currently the Chief Audit Executive the Accounting Profession to Financial group on of East West Bank headquartered in Pasa- Crimes and Embezzlement where the dena, California. East West Bank is a attendees learned how to assist in the NOVEMBER 2010 CAP REPORT By Rey Bejerano 2010-2011 2009-2010 Disneyland was 737 for SGV members and 486 for non IIA members. Additionally, the I am pleased to present a Service to Members 995 1,715 chapter’s share in the profit progress report for 2010-2011 Service to Profession 359 306 was approximately $12,000. Chapter Achievement Program Chapter Administration 208 325 The 6 months activities earned (CAP). The total CAP points the chapter 1,562 points and Total 1,562 2,346 earned for the six months officially the SGV Chapter ended November 30, 2010 are has now attained Gold status. shown below: The 2010-11 activities included a regular monthly Thank you to all the meetings; planning meetings of the Officers and committee chairs and Committee Chair; Western Regional Conference volunteers who help achieve held in Disney and a 2 day Fraud Symposium. The the gold status 7 straight year. Chapter’s share for the Western Regional Our goal is to attain platinum. Page 4 Conference held September 19 to 22, 2010 in From Our Members Tips for using ACL™ and Time, (4) Financial, (5) Logical, (6) Mathematical, (7) Miscellaneous, and (8) Many of us use ACL as an analysis tool, and are always String Access Functions. looking for ways to simplify the day-to-day analysis when a script is not readily available. This article is for You can view all the functions in the Expres- those of you who are still not quite the experts, but are sion Builder. Click the Functions drop-down past the beginner phase. You must have worked with list to select the category you want to view. ACL in order to understand some of the jargon that I will When building a function, remember to use single or be using in the next tips, please keep in mind that if you double quotes for characters (‘ ’ , “ ”) and back do not have an ACL project open, these tips will not quotes for dates ( ` ).