A secretary to the vice president of personnel regularly processes travel and entertainment expenses twice for the various managers for whom she works. She has discovered that by allowing a two-week lapse of time, reports are not compared with each other by the cash disbursements department. Since the secretary receives the checks for reimbursement, there is no problem extracting the second check when it arrives. She has perpetrated this fraud during the past six months.

Required:

As the internal auditor, how could you:

a. Detect the fraud?

b. Recommend controls to deter such a defalcation in the future?