Jack Palmer, a former colleague of yours at Wells Fargo Bank, owns several golf courses in Idaho. He is concerned that financial statement fraud is being perpetrated by his bookkeeper who may be in collusion with four other golf course managers. Each manager receives a substantial annual bonus on top of his or her annual salary if the golf course earns a certain amount of profits each year.

Jack recently attended a small golf course owner convention in Las Vegas. In discussions with other owners, he discovered that his golf courses were earning much more profit compared to other golf courses of a similar size in the Western region of the U.S.

When you and Jack worked together at Wells Fargo, he was the sales and marketing guy, and he affectionately called you The Numbers Guy. You two made a great team together while working at Wells Fargo. Jack trusts your intuition and asked for your help.

At the first meeting, Jack brought a complete set of financial statements, prepared by his bookkeeper, for the past five years for each golf course, including the:

Statements of Financial Condition,

Statements of Revenues and Expenses,

Statements of Cash Flow, and

Statements of Stockholders Equity.

The level of detail available and provided to you by Jack in that first meeting, especially for the Statements of Revenues and Expenses includes the following:

-Revenues by type/source of revenues recorded/earned by the golf course

-Expenses by type/source of expenses recorded/paid by the golf course

Questions/Requirements

Q1. What additional information and documentation do you need from Jack before a second meeting? Be specific.

Q2. Given that you have five years of financial information for each of the golf courses, where and how would you start your financial statement analysis to determine if fraud was occurring? Be extremely specific addressing which financial statements you would start analyzing first, why, and how you would go about it.

Q3. Is there any external information you might try to obtain or asking for to assist in the preparation of your financial statement analysis described in the above bullet? Be specific.