Forensic accounting: a ledger that recorded the loss but not where the money came from
The books balanced in the sense that every entry carried a number. They did not balance in the sense that the company could have paid for what it spent.
Counsel asked for an analysis of an operating company’s own accounting records: how much product had gone through its production process, how much of that product had been written off, and whether the company’s reported spending could be reconciled to any recorded source of funds.
Work from the ledger, not the summary
Every figure comes from the general ledger itself — the processing and write-off entries, the transaction dates, the dollar amounts and the memo text — rather than from a management summary of them.
Say which numbers are estimated, and why
Three entries recorded a processing cost but no quantity. Those quantities were derived by dividing the recorded cost by the processing rate used consistently everywhere else in the ledger, and each is disclosed on its face as an estimate.
Name both boundaries rather than letting one stand for the other
The write-off analysis ends at the last recorded write-off entry. The accounting file itself runs several weeks past that. The declaration states both dates, so that a reader knows which one each figure is measured to.
Ask the funding question separately
Whether the reported spending could have been paid for is a different question from what was spent. It is answered from the opening balance sheet, the profit and loss statement and the equity accounts — not from the income statement alone.
Why the write-off rate was the finding
The business recorded both what it processed and what it destroyed. Year by year, the destroyed share moved from 57 percent of everything processed in the first year to 80 percent across the eight months of the second — 71 percent over the two years combined.
A single year at 57 percent can be argued about. A trend that reaches 80 percent, in a ledger the company kept itself, changes what the argument is about. Neither figure required an opinion about anyone’s conduct: the write-offs were identified from the description field, and the quantities were read off the entries themselves.
What we do not do
We do not characterise a shortfall as a misappropriation. Identifying that roughly $3.9 million of spending has no recorded source of funds is an accounting finding. Concluding where the money went is not, and it is not an economist’s opinion to give.
The declaration says what the records show and stops: an opening balance sheet with about $543,000 in current assets, a year reporting a $3.84 million loss, revenue booked but never collected, and — after crediting roughly $1.2 million of recorded owner investment and the offsetting balance-sheet account — an unfunded remainder. The inference belongs to the finder of fact.
A funding gap the company records could not close
That both of counsel’s questions — how much product was destroyed, and whether the spending could have been paid for — were answerable from the company’s own ledger, without a single figure supplied by either party.
Parties, jurisdictions and identifying facts are altered or withheld. Methods, data volumes and outcomes are not.
Recognise your case in this one?
Tell us which part. We will tell you what was actually decisive in it.