The system that I had setup, allowed accountants to change any field on an invoice. Believe it or not, that was the request. What they didn't know was that I kept a simple before change/change request/after change snapshot of the data along with date/time/logon as I had been warned about by a wise professor back in my school days (daze?).
What I didn't know, was that they were changing the dates and invoice numbers on the invoices to make them look as if they were only 30-60 days old. This was to make the receivables look current, and therefore the company could leverage that to borrow money from Wells Fargo for purchase of more product to sell. The auditors from AA were very savvy and spotted the same invoice amount with different dates and different invoice numbers on printed aging reports kept for historical purposes. When they asked me about how that could happen, I produced the audit report. The accountants were charged with FRAUD at Wells Fargo's request and were tried and sent to jail! This was in the 80's. Way way before SOX. The first thing the accountants did was point the finger at me. That's why the auditors came to me along with the CEO with the intention of nailing me. Had I not been a paranoid programmer, I might have ended up in jail. The accountants thought I was a patsy, and got lots of time to think about that for 5 years. At the time, I worked for the accounting department. So I literally was protecting my career from my boss who was a fool of the highest magnitude and whom had drastically underestimated my abilities as a business analyst and programmer. Just because you're paranoid, doesn't mean they're NOT out to get you! -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Don Kibbey Sent: Wednesday, March 16, 2005 11:06 To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [U2]: Epicor My code has comments that don't always relate to the code. And I should probably step up the documentation to include the specific request itself. Or devise a more formal methad as Mr. Ellwood has done. But, where I work we are all "at will" employees. Fired at will or walk at will either way. I'm not too worried about loosing a job over some code changes that were misused. And I don't think that jail time is going to happen for a coder who makes a change that a CPA abuses. I should also point out that I have the benefit(!?!?) of working for a partnership that is not (yet) required to meet the SOX regulations. On Wed, 16 Mar 2005 09:59:34 -0800, Bill H. <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Don: > > There are a number or current laws and regulations that attempt to rid > public corporations of this kind of mismanagement. The result of these new > regulations may not so much be the reduction of corporate financial and IT > mismanagement, but the transfer of responsibility to lower level staff. :-( > > It may come to pass that you'll be held personally liable for someone else's > indiscriminate "business requirements". For those of us who think it is our > role to provide others with the ability to trash the integrity of the > organization's financial information; a rude awakening awaits! > > Bill > > > -----Original Message----- > > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Don Kibbey > > Sent: Wednesday, March 16, 2005 9:15 AM > > To: [email protected] > > Subject: Re: [U2]: Epicor > > > > Our resident "Bean Counters" have asked for and received > > several tools from me that will allow them to do the same > > thing to our system. It's our job to provide the "sharp > > knives", the CPA types have to be carefull not to remove > > appendages with said tools. > > ------- > > u2-users mailing list > > [email protected] > > To unsubscribe please visit http://listserver.u2ug.org/ > ------- > u2-users mailing list > [email protected] > To unsubscribe please visit http://listserver.u2ug.org/ ------- u2-users mailing list [email protected] To unsubscribe please visit http://listserver.u2ug.org/ ------- u2-users mailing list [email protected] To unsubscribe please visit http://listserver.u2ug.org/
