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Procedia Economics and Finance 38 (2016) 77 – 83

Istanbul Conference of Economics and Finance, ICEF 2015, 22-23 October 2015, Istanbul,
Turkey

Errors and Abuses in Financial Accounting and Results

Bucan Türkmena*
a
Turkiye Is Bankasi A.S. Istanbul, 34700, Turkey

Abstract

The effects of frequent errors and frauds in SME financial statements over business loans are considered in this study. The legal
sanctions of these errors and frauds are investigated by examining the tax inspection results between 1998 and 2004. Possible
was of identifying these financial statement fraud and errors are described. As a result of the “purification processes”, the change
in credit worthiness is explained.

©
© 2016
2015Published by Elsevier
The Authors. B.V.byThis
Published is an open
Elsevier B.V. access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
Peer-review under responsibility of the Organizing Committee of ICEF 2015.
Peer-review under responsibility of the Organizing Committee of ICEF 2015.
Keywords:Credit worthiness, financial analysis, SME

1. Introduction

Accounting is used for recording and classifying all kinds of tangible and intangible assets of a firm, which can be
converted into money, and income and expenses related with business’ activities. According to Sevilengul (2003: 9),
accounting is an information system that creates information about the financial situation of an organization and
transmits data to related parties about the formation of sources of the organization, the changes in these sources due
to the operations of the organization. Related parties are managers, employees, shareholders (partners), lenders,
employees and investors.

The accounting books are also classified and recording technique is reported by law in order to ensure uniformity.
As stated in Article 176 of the Tax Procedure Law, first class merchants keep accounts according to balance sheet
basis, second class merchants keep accounts according to operating ledger, where first-class traders are classified on
the basis of net sales or net purchases. These companies, as it is stated clause 182 of Tax Procedure Law, are
responsible for keeping journals, ledger, wherein journal entities are put together and inventory lists where are

*
Corresponding author. Tel.: +90262 323 5632.
E-mail address: [email protected]

2212-5671 © 2016 Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
Peer-review under responsibility of the Organizing Committee of ICEF 2015.
doi:10.1016/S2212-5671(16)30179-4
78 Bucan Türkmen / Procedia Economics and Finance 38 (2016) 77 – 83

recorded. This responsibility of the accuracy of the records fall onto directors, shareholders and independent
accountants, financial advisors and certified public accountants (CPA), who are not salaried employees.

On the other hand, only supervision for the companies which are not subject to Capital Markets Law, is carried
out by tax auditors. First of all, supervision consists of the verification of the accurateness of tax assessment and the
control of concerned promotive documents. (Tekin, Celikkaya, 2007:229). However, if the ledgers do not show any
attempt for decreasing of tax assessment, the nature of any falsification is ignored or leastly not given importance by
tax auditors. The mistakes that are made in the financial statements are corrected with the personal endeavor of CPA.
While fraud aims to deceive intentionally the concerned people by showing the existing thing in a different way,
error consists of the actions without the trace of any intention and profit. (Simsek,2001: 13). The responsibility of
public authority is determining such fraud and errors and composing of proper control systems. (Sipahi, 2004:117).
However, the sanctions for fraud and errors in the balance sheet are located in the Capital Markets Law.

The balance sheet is declared in corporate tax return at the end of accounting periods. In order to increase
credibility of the financial statements, accounting operations for adorning the statements are used. In this regard, the
income statement is specially failed by omission of recording some of the expenses in order to acquire better
performance results (Alpturk, 2007: 24).

In the name of increasing profitability, some expenses are capitalized or not registering of some expenses; for the
extra net working capital, becoming current assets some tangible assets records by the rectifying entry some in
addition to make short-term debt seem as long- term debts are common tricks. (Ulusoy, 2009:121). These frauds can
be determined by credit analyses, and deducted from reserved funds which records should involves the income
statement and that are not noted; the rest of it is deducted from undistributed profits.

In this study, the reasons and the results of accounting fraud and errors, which do not affect tax assessment, are
investigated. In this scope, accounting fraud and errors of SMEs, which are not subject to the Capital Markets Law,
will be discussed in the scope of credit worthiness management. In addition, the effects of financial statement
corrections on bank credit demand management are discussed. Financial statement adorning and the results of this
upon the effect of the credit demands of SMEs will be mentioned.

2. The theoretical background of Turkish accounting system

A firm begins to operate with a payment into equity capital. It invests in infrastructure, etc. in case of necessity. It
buys raw material or goods to be transformed into other goods used in selling. They sell what they have bought or
produced. At the end of all of these processes, asset structure of the firm is determined. For these events, it can meet
situations in which it needs to find funds. Potential fund sources can be shareholders or third parties. At the end of
all of these operations, financial statements of the firm will come into existence. These operations are conducted by
shareholders of firm and employees. Any documents available for the abovementioned transactions should be
presented to accounting department or CPA.

If this information is explained what it must be and in condition of making account in the right way, the financial
situation of the firm is seen clearly. After general journals and detail account are formed, balance sheet and
income table will appear as the summary of all these. Any true analysis that is conducted according to a non present
statement will result in a false way. The possibility of getting a right result from a non present statement is less even
than the potential of showing the exact time of a broken watch. This analysis causes information report and
independent audit report that is reported to management of the firm, also evaluations which are made by banks to be
shareholder or to give debt to third party false. Also with that it causes the appearance of wrong decisions. This can
cause financial punishments such as tax loss for not being loyal to tax procedure law or punishments that make firm
and its shareholder pay financial punishments.
 Bucan Türkmen / Procedia Economics and Finance 38 (2016) 77 – 83 79

Balance sheets of corporate firms are formed in the accounting procedures and decisive mechanisms of the firm
and they are finalised by the final approval of the salaried CPAs of the firm. In this context, false financial
statements’ sanctions towards employees are greater. On the other hand, financial statements of SME’s are directly
prepared by a CPA and also approved by him.

Certified Financial Accountants are responsible for the accuracy of their affirmation on financial statements in
accordance with Article 4 of “Regulation on the Principles and Procedures for Ratification”, which is published on
01.02.1990. They are responsible for their approval, in condition of incorrect financial statements they will be held
severally and jointly liable for the loss of taxes. Therefore, tax investigation activities related to the prior approval of
reducing the tax base is very tight.

3. Analysis

3.1. Accounting Fraud and Errors in Turkey

Tax evasion is the process of lowering the income or increasing the expenses of the firm in order to lower the
taxable net profit. According to Tax Procedure Law, to the operations about attempts of decrease in tax assessment
are against punishments. In this article, the accounting operations which do not have sanctions are mentioned hence
the concept of tax evasion is left behind.

In Turkey, the sanction of fraud and error in financial statements are organized according to income table except
Capital Markets Law. The purpose of this is closely related to taxes by the government, which is a partner for 20%
all companies’ profits. The sanctions that are mentioned at Tax Procedure Law are against tax losses and not
keeping journal or not submitting (Article from 192- 344). Controls are against tax evasions. When the punishments
are examined that are given by tax auditors, the punishments between 1998 and 2004 are based on tax evasion
through understatement, forgery of documents, fake invoice adjustment etc.

Table 1. Tax Inspection Results Between 1998 – 2004

Year Number of Inspected Tax Base Revealed Tax Base
Inspections (Million TRL) Difference (Million TRL)
2012 46.845 4.535.523.091 8.776.095.415
2013 71.352 8.561.313.250 19.086.884.477
2014 55,284 7.939.389.423 16.582.633.968
2015 58.676 9.803.999.983 18.843.082.627

As it can be seen from Table 1, there is no predefined sanction for financial statement fraud and errors that do not
reduce the tax base.

Firms not only house accounting services within itself, but also can access this service from outside of the firm.
Since, housing accounting operations require much human resource, and increase burdens such as individual
medical payments etc., transnational firms and SME’s generally outsource accounting operations. Although the
external accounting procedures use specific accounting programs, used with special patches peculiar to the company
and are subjected to controls such as process management, risk management, internal control, inspection as controls
some errors due to incomplete or inaccurate entries cannot be avoided.

According to a report conducted by BRSA (2003:61) about a bank in Turkey, it is understood that the collection
of capital and interests of credits of the bank are not carried out for a long time. Also it is stated that income is
produced by rediscounting these credits, and adding them to capital. Although there exists a great loss from credit
80 Bucan Türkmen / Procedia Economics and Finance 38 (2016) 77 – 83

operations and this loss increases gradually, financial statements are still shown as profitable. Such examples for
Turkey can be raised.

3.2. Accounting Fraud and Abuses in the World

Some firms that their names are involved in striking accounting scandals can be listed as; MiniScribe (1989),
Cendant (1998), Xerox (2000), One Tel (2001), Enron (2001), Freddie Mac (2002), Lucent Technologies (2002),
Merrill Lynch(2002), Tyco International(2002), Royal Ahold (2003), AIG (2005) (Markham, 2015) . But Enron
Case comes to one’s mind at first when accounting manipulation is mentioned. Before and during this event, the
firms that the auditor and consultant of especially Arthur Andersen firm, at the same time the firms that he makes
consultants to high amount of money, have made accounting mistakes declare to public. At that time, there were
laws that legally prevent manipulations which the managers and auditors of firms make in order to increase the
profit of firm theorically. (Suer,2004:46). We can say that public opinion is aware of this fact that the firms which
have great importance in the world will not produce these kind of manipulations. However, at the result of
manipulations, the profit of the firm was above true rate. So, this affected the currency of the firm. When the truth
came to light, stocks lost value much. Firm makes evolution of its investments by market prices. Also when market
prices showed increase, it wrote down as profit, but when the prices decreased, it didn't reflect this loss, rather than
this, it sold this to firms that didn't have percentage of corporation to high prices. Thus, it could hide its loss. It gave
stocks to these firms. Another trick is that it made other international firms do the investments that closely depend
on polytheism. Cash-flow was provided via Enron. For example, when it needed buying tanks, it caused the firms
that have no relation with itself to get into debt. Later, it rented this from the mentioned firm to highly low price. For
this reason, Enron was seen as profitable and having low debt burden. But, there was something unknown and that
was about giving stocks of Enron firm in return of the loss of these firms.

4. General Balance Sheet Items and General Mistakes and Corrections

General mistakes that are done at balance sheets and adjustments which are used to provide the equality between
active and passive.

100. Cash Account

We can talk about general faults including witnessing the lacunal or ever present amount found in the pockets of
shareholders and not being able to evaluate the amount of foreign money. Analyzer fictive and deducts other
payments from available surplus.

101- Cheques Received

It is the cash which the firm gets dues from other firms via check. At this cash, the examples of collected
checks, returned bad checks, advance check or not following the process of firm's drawing of dues are among
general mistakes.

102. Bank
In 2002, Parmalat Bank of America explained that the abstract accounts of bank deposits were not received or
they were provided from banks which were less than working ones. That's why they were either monitored so much
or an incomplete way. And this resulted in 4,9 billion EUR.

But this information was not approved by Bank of America. When annual audit is not done by accountant,
evaluation operations cannot have fulfilled. And these are general mistakes. Some accountants think bank overdrafts
in this category. For example, ın the case the bank is in debt about 50,000 TL, since at the fourth bank, there is bank
overdraft and when the firm has 100,000 tl money in three banks,
 Bucan Türkmen / Procedia Economics and Finance 38 (2016) 77 – 83 81

102- Bank deposit can follow the amount as 50,000 TL. In situations where there is not so high amount of
money, if he works at bank, the analyzer takes base the account balance of the bank he works. But, as the need of
precautionary principle, under investigated amounts are not taken into consideration. And surplus amounts are
clipped from available surplus.

103. Cheques issued and payment orders.

It is the account that follows checks which it draws for the firms it is indebted to. At this account, the personal
needs of the shareholders of the firm, also assigned, returned, destructed or long term checks which are beyond a
year are controlled. These are all general mistakes. Analyzer can follow these amounts from consumer reporting
agency.

110. Stock Certificates

The stocks of the firm that has a place and are waited for sale in order to provide selling for short term or
commercial gain. It is also seen that the activities of the shareholders, capital charge which are transferred to the
activities of the firm. Analyzer records deduction from the available surplus, and records the affiliates' share to
concerned financial fixed assets.
112. Public sector bonds and notes
It proves the investment to value documents such as sector bonds and notes that are published by under
secretariat for the treasury. There are also firms that monitor the bank deposit at this department.

120. Trade Receivables

This department is one of the accounts where the mistakes are seen mostly. Though trade receivables are
received, gradient process cannot be applied. Apart from amounts transferred to shareholders, financing receivables
transferred to sister companies and third parties, fees for leasing, deposit payments, deferred debit, advances given
to personnel, receivables against bill, checks, order advances, fees and advanced money paid for Letters of Credit,
POS receivables from banks can be monitored at this account. Loan interests for checks with receivables are shown
at this account.

Also construction firms monitor the payment that is done above its cost from incomplete constructions at this
account. Until deed transfer is done, the over plus that stays behind which advances are received during deed
transfer it monitors at debts to shareholders.

By comparing annual return that belongs to last period to current year return, analyzer receives passive
receivables whose balance carries on from available surplus. He transfers receivables to real accounts.

150. Stocks
It is the account where all the payments of commodities bought by the firm to sell and processed.

At this account also, the interest and commission of credits that sold but its account is not credited, or not
recorded to the related account, or not classified, outcomes such as cardings, constructions which need to monitored
in the account of construction costs and physical assets are also monitored in this account. Construction firms can
follow lands under the name of commodities. If it is sold in a year, it is kept substantial. Or if it is evaluated as a
project, it is subject to adjustments. Analyzer can monitor changes. For example, one suspects of net profits on sales,
one may compare it to other years. In this kind of situation, he can follow these from the changes of stocks. Also, he
provides classification of stocks that are not in relation to the activity of the firm in a right way. The performance of
last years will bring light to current year. He can also determine the outcomes that are activated from balance. These
amounts are received from income reserves. When the monitoring of advances continues, he puts into practice in the
frame of firm return.

220. Trade Receivables

82 Bucan Türkmen / Procedia Economics and Finance 38 (2016) 77 – 83

In this account, trade receivables are examined that appears as a result of completion of a project that is long
term. It is seen at projects such as HES, RES. But, as a result of wrong classification, trade receivables with short
term are monitored in this account. The receivables, that judicial process is not completed, are also monitored in this
account. In the frame of firm return, these amounts are either recorded to trade receivables with short term or
received from available surplus.

240. Financial Fixed Assets

In this account, the capital sums which are transferred to shareholders or the share of this amount that belongs to
mentioned firm are monitored. There is generally such a mistake in this account that purchases of the firms are
monitored in this account. Person and institutions that are included in transferring fees which have a place in
commercial registry gazette, corporate tax return are taken advantage of. If the firms which the main firm has
sharing directly or indirectly are determined a thing separated from financial fixed assets, the mentioned amount are
received from the department of payables to shareholders. Otherwise, it is gotten from available surplus.

300. Bank Credits

In this chapter, the bank credits with short term are monitored. Not monitoring this debt any more or monitoring
it by credits with long term are mainly mistakes. Analyzer should check the bank credits of the specific month from
the mixed data that Risk Center explains. İncomplete credits are corrected if incomplete credits are monitored from
bank credits with long term. If it is not monitored for a long time, it is received from available surplus. Accounting
supervisors can follow the credits via payables to shareholders. When the bank does not submit the credit
documents, it evaluates the process that are established between credit and financing as interested deposit. For the
precautionary principle, analyzer will receive this not from the payables of shareholder, but, available surplus.
Another mistake that is seen here is that credits with long term and payment of interest and capital are monitored in
this account. Analyzer will make necessary classification.

320. Trade Payables

It is the account where debts resulting from commercial activities of the firm as indented or deedless. It is the
main group that is open to mistake and manipulation at passive side. The debts that are seen as if it is not paid, bank
credits especially leasing credits, renting debts are also erased from the commercial debt of the related company or
person. Payables of shareholders, tax debts, debts to personnel and even SGK debts are monitored in this account.
Analyzer conducts the process of submitting. He compares trade payables. He submits the coherent items. He
determines the accounts that does not any movement for a long time and asks the reasons of it.

33. Other Liabilities

It is the account where debts except for commercial activity of firm with short term are examined. Firms examine
debts that they can't examine. Payables to shareholders item is the item in which all long term payments except the
capital that shareholders of the firm transfer to firm, are examined.

It is joker item when the accountant uses for spending and payments in the case of his not reaching necessary
documents. In this case, he cannot submit these documents. Also, it is the account where non official receivables and
sales can be hidden.

For example, construction firms sell the flat which costs 100 TL to 200 TL. And it realizes its cash proceeds.
Think that the value of this flat is shown as 120 TL. In this case, as a result of accounting movements of the firm, 20
TL profit and 80 TL payables to shareholders will come about. This item certainly does not include debt depression.
In order to measure the real state of floating capital, transfers related long term item to under the capitalizing
accounts or 434- long term payables of shareholders.

There are absolutely accounting mistakes and tricks which are not mentioned in this article. But, since the matter
is not trick, rather mistakes, they will not have talked about here. These items are regarded as the mostly used by
accountants.
 Bucan Türkmen / Procedia Economics and Finance 38 (2016) 77 – 83 83

This condition that is especially seen in SMEs, not to report sales of the personnel who is responsible for the
selling and not having a necessary computer software for this process, not sending of the bills and receipt of
payment or never prepared, not evualue foreign money receivables, thinking bank deposits and cash amount as
control accounts, not giving information incompletely to the amounts of stock are examples of it.

As it is seen, depending on the precautionary principle, analyzers generally submit from available surplus. In this
way, capitalization becomes much less. The use of equity and the rate of being in debt become worse. Wıth the gap
of equity, the firm may seem worse than its looks in reality. From the account of payables of shareholders, it is not
made gradient.

The floating capital that is accounted as the difference of debts with long term and firm values have importance.
The accountants who know analysis and want the firm find credit from banks, apply to some items whose early
name was Hile-yi Şer'iye”. Thus, they balance some stocks with the item of payables of shareholders. Also, they
continue monitoring having less value trade payables. But it must be known that this evaluation is being conducted
by many rates such as accounts receivable turnover rate, stock turnover and time for commercial debt. Also
accountants can affect the current year, and analysis is made according to three periods. These processes made by
accountant during three years draw attention and ruin its bases. Related turnover rate are asked to shareholders or
supervisors during firm interview. Later, in this way, the performance is examined in detail.

5. Conclusions

Firms can make some abuses in order to show financial statements more credible than usual for more and cheap
credit facilities. These manipulations in SME’s financial reports, which are not subject to capital market rule; does
not concern any sanctions by legal authority in Turkey, unless decreasing income tax assessment. Balance sheet
entries that doesn't affect tax assessment are seen as unimportant by accountants, therefore. Statements that have
place in financial survey, when it states the errors and abuses that are mentioned in this article, it will be deducted
from equity. That corrections make the firms equities deteriorating and the debt ratios increasing.

Errors and abuses can be found by the way listed above. Financial analysts are trained and employed for this
issue. Moreover, these processes make the firms become non-credible, which is opposite for the object. The legal
authority have to enact laws for abuses, and the tax inspectors should check financial statements. For this purpose,
the methods and systems that financial analysts used, should be displayed by inspectors.

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