Here are a few of the stories, edited for brevity along with commentary on what went wrong.

1. Do you return checks to requesters? Here's what happened to one reader whose firm allowed this very weak practice. The office manager took checks written for tradeshow expenses and deposited them into her personal account.



2. If you do have a fraud, heavens forbid, do you learn from it and close the loopholes? "Our educational institution," writes one respondent, "was the victim of embezzlement not once, but twice, both times by the business manager."



3. Do you get W-9s for every new vendor and then do some sort of verification? Consider what can happen if you don't. An employee at a remote location of one of our respondents submitted invoices for which there was no actual vendor and then pocketed the money.



4. If you think controls on the master vendor file are not important, consider this. "We had an employee who had the ability to request vendor adds," another reader explains "She also approved invoices. [Yes, this is also a segregation of duties issue.] She requested a fraudulent vendor setup and created invoices to be paid with her approval. Using a GL account with a lot of activity and not cost center relevant, she submitted thousands of dollars worth of invoices over several years."



5. Are you using positive pay? If not, the following, which occurred at one of our reader's organizations, could also happen in your shop. This reader writes," Someone got hold of one of our checks and recreated it using a phony vendor, phony check number, but forging the real signatures and account numbers.

Please join me on December 11 for this special Webinar I'll discuss:

• The actual results and compare them with other fraud statistics
• Analyze the results showing you where fraud is most likely to occur in your shop
• Provide insights on how to detect some of the more common frauds
• Share real-life stories of frauds and the outcomes (and you'll get to vote on how you think the fraud should have been handled)
• Identify best practices to help prevent fraud at your organization

If you know how to log onto the Internet and dial a phone, you possess the technical skills needed to attend an Accounts Payable Now & Tomorrow Webinar. Bring the entire staff together with a speaker phone to hear the presentation and a computer to view the supplementary material and you're set. A practice link, logon instructions, and passwords will be provided 24 to 48 hours in advance.

During the session you will have the opportunity to send your questions to the speakers. In general, they will be answered at the end. But, you can send them along, either by e-mail or through use of the dialog box, as they occur to you. Simply type your question in the dialog box, which will appear to the left of your screen during the entire event. The box is marked Say. Then hit the carriage return. It's that easy. If fact, if you want to try it out after you sign on, try sending a greeting or your name before we get started.

When: December 11, 2007
Where: Your office!
Cost: $99 for webinar or CD; $179 for both CD & Webinar (if ordered together) Note: the price of this CD will revert to our normal $159 price on December 31.
Time: 2:00 p.m. EST (1:00 p.m. CST; noon MST; 11:00 a.m. PST)

I hope you'll join us on the 11th. Can't make it? We will record the session and have CDs available shortly thereafter.
Mary Schaeffer