Your manager requires you, as the accountant, to enter each sale immediately. Re
ID: 2657762 • Letter: Y
Question
Your manager requires you, as the accountant, to enter each sale immediately. Recently, lunch hour traffic has increased at the jewelry store. To avoid service delays, the assistant manager asks you to take customers’ cash and make change without entering sales. The assistant manager says she will add up cash and enter sales into the accounting system after lunch. She says that, in this way, the register will always match the cash amount when the manager arrives at three o’clock.
Briefly provide answers to the following questions:
State one ethical concern that you have about the assistant manager’s request. Justify your answer.
What approach would you take to express your views on the request? Explain your answer.
Explanation / Answer
There are at least three clear concerns which emanate from the instruction given by the Assistant manager.
Overall, from a safety and controls perspective, the accountant should not follow the assistant manager's advice without getting a prior approval of the same from the Manager. However, considering the rush hour traffic and the practical expediency of this approach, the accountant and assistant manager should propose this deviation from the sales protocol as a special exception for a limited period ( say during the 2 hour lunch period). If the manager agrees, this would eliminate the ethical dilemma of violation of a protocol and also make the Assistant Manager more accountable for the same discouraging any fraudulent activity as the Manager is now soundly aware of the practice.
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