Plan a forensic review of a small business's financial records
A structured plan to review several years of records for errors or misconduct: scope, documents, red flags, and how to raise findings.
The prompt
Help me plan a forensic review of my small business's financial records.
Business type and size: [e.g. "restaurant, $2M revenue, 15 staff"]
Why I'm concerned: [e.g. "cash seems short", "partner dispute", "margins dropped without explanation", "selling the business"]
Period to review: [e.g. "the last 8 years"]
Records available: [bank statements, general ledger, tax returns, payroll, POS data, invoices, credit card statements]
Who controls the books: [me / my business partner / a bookkeeper / an outside accountant]
Give me:
1. Scope and approach: where to start (usually the most recent 2-3 years and the highest-risk areas), when to expand, and sampling vs. full review.
2. Document request list and how to preserve originals and keep a chain of custody so findings remain usable.
3. Tests to run, with what each catches: bank-to-ledger reconciliation, revenue vs. deposits, vendor master review (unknown vendors, vendor addresses matching employees), duplicate or round-number payments, payroll ghost employees, personal expenses, journal entries posted at unusual times or by unusual users, unexplained cash withdrawals, and trend and ratio analysis year over year.
4. Red flags table: Red flag | Where it shows up | Innocent explanations to rule out | Next step.
5. Tools: spreadsheet techniques and the kinds of software that help.
6. Raising concerns with my partner or staff: how to stay factual, what not to say before the facts are clear, and how to document conversations.
This is general information. If I suspect fraud, recommend I involve a certified fraud examiner or forensic accountant and a lawyer before confronting anyone, because how evidence is handled matters.
Highlighted [brackets] are blanks to replace with your own details.
Fill in the blanks and use this promptMore Finance & Accounting prompts
What to fill in
- e.g. "restaurant, $2M revenue, 15 staff"
- e.g. "the last 8 years"
How this prompt is built
This prompt follows the Few-Shot structure (Few-shot prompting). A few-shot prompt includes one or more worked examples of the input and the output you want, so the model can copy the pattern instead of guessing it.
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