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Fraud Lens for Accountants—Expenses, Payroll, Cash & Tax

Master payroll, expense, cash & tax fraud detection with practical red-flag tools. Implement controls using AI/RPA automation to safeguard from financial schemes in daily transactions.

Created byPeter Ilas, FCCAworkspace_premiumBest Instructor
BeginnerUpdated Jul 19, 2025

What You'll Learn

  • check_circleIdentify the most common fraud schemes in payroll, expense reimbursements, petty cash, and transactional tax processes.
  • check_circleRecognize key red flags that indicate possible payroll, expense, or tax fraud, using the provided Red-Flag Cards.
  • check_circleImplement practical preventive and detective controls to mitigate fraud risks in payroll, expenses, cash and tax ops.
  • check_circleApply ethical decision-making tools—including the Rapid Dilemma Tree for Daily Transactions.
  • check_circleLeverage technology and automation (RPA/AI) to augment fraud prevention and detection in daily transactions.
  • check_circleUnderstand what is your real-life exposure to fraud in payroll, expense reimbursement, cash management and taxes.

About This Course

This comprehensive course is essential for finance professionals seeking to fortify their organization's defenses against financial wrongdoing. Uncover the alarming statistics: organizations lose approximately 5% of their revenue to fraud annually, with a significant portion occurring in routine, high-volume payroll processing, expense reimbursements, petty cash handling, and daily tax transactions.

This practical course equips you with essential skills to understand modern fraud schemes, spot red flags and subtle signs, select the most effective controls, and protect your organization's assets throughout payroll cycles, expense reimbursement processes, cash handling, and tax compliance. You'll master how to detect and prevent common fraud schemes in these critical financial areas, which are particularly vulnerable to both internal manipulation and external threats.

Through real-world scenarios and practical applications, you'll learn:

  • Payroll Fraud Prevention: Identify ghost employees, falsified hours, unauthorized pay raises, and other schemes threatening your payroll integrity and employee trust
  • Expense Reimbursement Protection: Recognize mischaracterized expenses, fictitious claims, duplicate submissions, and other clever techniques
  • Cash Controls Implementation: Design and implement easy but powerful preventive and detective controls specifically tailored for petty cash handling
  • Tax Fraud Detection: Spot sales tax/VAT evasion, payroll tax skimming, and other transactional tax schemes before they hit your organization

The course includes four valuable downloadable tools you can immediately apply in your daily work:

  • Payroll Red-Flag Cards: Quick reference guide for identifying the eight most common fraud indicators in payroll processing
  • Expense & Cash Red-Flag Cards: Eight warning signs of potential fraud in expense reports and petty cash transactions
  • Tax Red-Flag Cards: Eight key indicators of transactional tax fraud that demand immediate attention
  • Rapid Dilemma Tree for Daily Transactions: Four quick questions for making sound ethical decisions when facing questionable situations

Whether you're a CPA, accounting manager, controller, internal auditor, or finance professional, this course will enhance your ability to safeguard your organization's financial integrity throughout daily transaction processes. Join us to develop your "fraud lens" and become a stronger defender against fraud attempts in your payroll, expense, cash, and tax operations.

Course Content

6 activities • 15 videos • duration: 1h 51m

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Introduction—Why Ethics in Transactions Matter2 videos • 10 min
  • videocamIntroduction and Bonus Tools
    Duration 5:08
  • videocamWhy Ethics in Transactions Matter (Statistics)
    Duration 5:20
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Payroll Fraud Prevention4 videos • 1 quiz • 31 min
add
Expense Reimbursement and Petty Cash Fraud4 videos • 1 quiz • 32 min
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Tax Fraud in Daily Operations4 videos • 1 quiz • 32 min
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Course Wrap-Up and Next Steps1 videos • 4 min
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Final Assessment1 quiz

Your Instructor

Peter Ilas, FCCA

Practical AI for Accounting & Finance | Build Your Own Tools | Fraud Prevention, E-Invoicing & Ethics | 30 Years of Experience

menu_book17 courses
star307 reviews

My courses focus on practical applications of AI in accounting and finance, alongside fraud prevention, e-invoicing and financial reporting ethics. – AI Finance: Build and customise reconciliation tools and fraud dashboards using plain-language prompts (“vibe coding”), without prior programming experience. Learn to validate results, protect sensitive data and create repeatable workflows. – Fraud prevention and internal controls: Recognise red flags in invoices, payments, payroll and other transactions, and apply preventive controls and structured investigation methods. – E-invoicing: Understand global requirements, electronic invoice formats and opportunities to automate accounts payable and receivable. – Financial reporting ethics: Work through accounting judgments, estimates and ethical dilemmas using practical cases and decision-making tools. My teaching draws on 30 years of experience in accounting, finance leadership, internal and external audit, and transformation, including roles at Big4 firms, DELL, SSE and TOMRA. I am a Fellow of ACCA (FCCA) and the founder of E-LITE Consulting and RSAgile.

Credit Information

Is this course eligible for my CPD requirements as a Canadian CPA?

Provincial regulators of CPAs in Canada do not require that independent providers of CPD be approved to offer courses. Instead, individual CPAs are responsible for assessing whether a CPD activity meets their requirements, and may take activities from any source provided those requirements are met.

Every course offered on LearnFormula is delivered by a qualified subject matter expert or learning organization, and advances learning objectives that are relevant to the responsibilities or professional competencies of Canadian CPAs. All activities on LearnFormula are quantifiable in terms of hours, and are also verifiable, in that users receive documented evidence of their attendance via a certificate of completion after finishing a course (and this certificate is stored by LearnFormula indefinitely). Nearly 100,000 Canadian CPAs successfully satisfy their CPD requirements via LearnFormula on an annual basis.

What Students Are Saying

4.9 out of 5
Student's Choice
40 reviews
  • MH
    Mike H.
    starstarstarstarstar

    Always useful to refresh knowledge and be exposed to new (to me) ideas. This was informative and though provocing.

  • SM
    Sharon M.
    starstarstarstarstar

    The course is very informative. implementation. It provides practical strategies for implementation to minimise fraud.

  • EM
    Ed M.
    starstarstarstarstar

    Good review of potential fraud and controls to address

  • MK
    Marcella K.
    starstarstarstarstar

    Great content. Peter is very knowledgeable and experienced in this topic. Expense reimbursement is now my area of concern. Thanks Peter for the bonus tools and the presentations – very practical.

Frequently Asked Questions

We are a registered provider with 300+ associations and regulatory bodies worldwide. We operate across 27 global markets including Canada, the US, Australia, and the UK. Every course page clearly displays its specific accreditations. Upon completion, you receive a professional certificate that can be validated online. Our certificates include all necessary accreditation details, credit hours, and completion dates, and are formatted specifically to meet the submission requirements of most global regulatory bodies.

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