Currently an employee at a fortune 1000 company – Corporate finance - shady accounting practices

Currently an employee at a fortune 1000 company – corporate finance - shady accounting practices

Would like to get everyone’s opinion on my current job

I work at a major company doing financial reporting – aka we have to report our financial status to corporate headquarters and I am in charge of that.

During my short stint I have been requested to:

  • change the accounts receivable percentage, even though we have had trouble collecting 20% of our payments from clients, the head honcho aka subsidiary president wanted it lowered to 10%. Head office expects every subsidiary to hit a target % lower than 10%

  • lower our daily payables to make us look like we have more cash than we actually do

  • Explain we had a rise in expense in the millions through bulls**t reasons. Our company built a new factory site without getting approval from headquarters first. Therefore they have to hide new expenses in the millions.

Is this normal for a corporate finance Position? This is a major company everyone’s heard of, and I’m surprised at what’s going on.

Also since I just recently entered the company, I am starting to worry that I might be the fall guy aka the guy to blame, if everything comes to light. Thoughts? Comments? PMs welcome

6 Comments
 
Best Response

These practices are completely normal; you'll find stuff like this at pretty much any Fortune 1000 company, especially at the plant/satellite locations. However, the consistency you describe is somewhat disturbing. I would definitely recommend you report this via your company's anonymous ethics hotline (every F1000 has one). Prepare and organize detailed information - emails, dates, supporting detail, etc. Don't reveal who you are - if it turns out this stuff is above water, technically there are laws against anyone retaliating against you, but if the subsidiary president finds out you tried to rat him out, he'll be gunning for you the rest of your career there. PM me - I'm an auditor and Certified Fraud Examiner.

 

808 => messaged you

This is the OP here

I remember reading through Amazon.com’s annual report: http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=97664&p=irol-reportsannual

The balance sheet is consolidated, and sales figures are only broken down into North American and International, a lot of international companies do this.

Do you think that since for example, Amazon doesn’t have to lists its sales figures by country (and they don’t), that there is a lot of creative accounting that big companies can get away with?

I’m not sure there is a whole lot I can do. Even if I were able to whistleblow, that would just blackball me from all for profit corporations right? With current hiring conditions, I might just have to stick it out until things start picking up again.

 

Numquam recusandae corrupti eaque expedita soluta quam ipsa est. Dolores porro quod minima reiciendis explicabo sint architecto qui.

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