John Billings was set up in business by his father, who purchased the business of an elderly acquaintance wishing to retire. One of the few changes in personnel made by Billings was to install a college classmate as the office manager-bookkeeper-cashier-sales manager. During the course of the year, Billings borrowed money from the bank with his father as cosignf . Although his business seemed profitable, there was a shortage of cash. The company's invest-

ments in inventories and receivables grew substantially. Finally, after a year had elapsed, Billings's father employed you, a certified public accountant, to audit the records of his business. You reported that the office manager-bookkeeper-cashier-sales manager had been misappropriating funds and had been using a variety of schemes to cover his actions. More specifically, he had:

1. Pocketed cash receipts from sales and understated the cash register readings at the end of the day or altered the copies of the sales tickets retained.

2. Stolen checks mailed to the company in payment of accounts receivable, credited the proper accounts, and then debited fictitious receivables to keep the records in balance.

3. Issued checks to fictitious suppliers and deposited them in accounts bearing these names with himself as signer of checks drawn on these accounts; the books were kept in balance by debiting the Purchases account.

4. Stolen petty cash funds by drawing false vouchers purporting to cover a variety of expenses incurred.

5. Prepared false sales returns vouchers indicating the return of cash sales to cover further thefts of cash receipts.

For each item in the preceding list, describe in writing at least one feature of good internal control that would have prevented the losses due to dishonesty.