16-26 (Evaluation of internal controls-raw materials and supplies inventory) The Jameson Company produces a variety of chemical products for use by plastics manufacturers. The plant operates on two shifts, five days per week, with maintenance work performed on the third shift and on Saturdays as required.
An audit conducted by the staff of the new corporate internal audit department has recently been completed, and the comments on inventory control were not favorable. Audit comments were particularly directed to the control of raw material ingredients and maintenance materials.
Raw material ingredients are received at the back of the plant, signed for by one of the employees of the batching department, and stored near the location of the initial batching process. Receiving tallies are given to the supervisor during the day, and he forwards the tallies to the inventory control department at the end of the day. The inventory control department calculates ingredient use using weekly reports of actual production and standard formulas.
Physical inventories are taken quarterly. Purchase requisitions are prepared by the inventory control department and rush orders are frequent. In spite of the need for rush orders, the production superintendent regularly gets memos from the controller stating that there must be excessive inventory because the ingredient inventory dollar value is too high.
Maintenance parts and supplies are received and stored in a storeroom. There is a storeroom clerk on each of the operating shifts. Storeroom requisitions are to be filled out for everything taken from the storeroom; however, this practice is not always followed. The storeroom is not locked when the clerk is out because of the need to obtain parts quickly.
The storeroom is also open during the third shift for the maintenance crews to get parts as needed. Purchase requisitions are prepared by the storeroom clerk, and physical inventory is taken on a cycle count basis. Rush orders are frequent.
Required
a. Identify the weaknesses in Jameson Company's internal control procedures used for (1) ingredients inventory and (2) maintenance material and supplies inventory.
b. Recommend improvements that should be instituted for each of these areas.
16-29 (Computer-assisted substantive tests for inventory) An auditor is conducting an audit of the financial statements of a wholesale cosmetics distributor with an inventory consisting of thousands of individual items. The distributor keeps its inventory in its own distribution center and two public warehouses. An inventory computer file is maintained on a computer disk and at the end of each day the file is updated. Each record of the inventory file contains the following data:
1. Item number
2. Location of item
3. Description of item
4. Quantity on hand
5. Cost per item
6. Date of last purchase
7. Date of last sale
8. Quantity sold during year
The auditor is planning to observe the distributor's physical count of inventories as of a given date. The auditor will have available a computer tape of the data on the inventory file on the date of the physical count and a general-purpose computer software package.
Required
The auditor is planning to perform inventory substantive tests. Identify the inventory tests and describe how use of the general-purpose software package and the tape of the inventory file data might be helpful to the auditor in performing such tests. (Hint: You may wish to refer to Chapter 12 as well as this chapter in answering this question.) Organize your answer as follows: