ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, May 8, 1996 TAG: 9605080025
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: B-8 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: DALLAS
SOURCE: Associated Press
FOR A PERCENTAGE OF THE RECOVERED CASH, accountants search for overpayments, missed discounts and any other wasted money.
Digging through piles of invoices, scouring through the books, accountant bounty hunters are finding there's gold in bills.
Mistakes are money for auditors searching business records for duplicate payments, overpayments, missed discounts, sales tax errors and any other wasted money.
Their reward? A percentage of any recovered cash.
``It's a win-win situation,'' said Ann Schwenk, manager of accounts payable for Aviall, a Dallas-based distributor of airplane parts that hired Loder Drew & Associates to review their books. ``We had this money just sitting there waiting for us.''
Aviall decided to review its books in 1992-93 to check its accounting procedures. Irvine, Calif.-based Loder Drew found about $200,000 worth of lapses in the company's $600 million worth of billing that year.
``Two-hundred thousand out of $600 million is not very much,'' Schwenk said. ``But it's plenty.''
Accountant bounty hunters scour their clients' books, looking for problem areas, things that don't add up or were just overlooked. Then they try to recover the missing funds, creating a veritable gold mine for customers.
``As large corporations continue to streamline processes to add value, they need to be sure not to leak profits along the way,'' said Loder Drew chief executive officer Ron Loder.
Loder Drew, for example, has conducted more than 2,000 audits since its inception in 1985, recovering more than $15 million in 1995 alone. The firm also has developed a software program to aid the search and to protect against further losses.
There are only about a dozen firms around the country that specialize in audit recovery work, mostly because it requires a considerable amount of computers and software and is quite expensive, said Howard Schultz, founder of Howard Schultz & Associates in Dallas.
But demand for such services is increasing, as more companies want to protect themselves from unnecessary losses.
``I think companies have come to recognize in this day and age that these things can happen. They are more used to it,'' Schultz said of the fact that outside auditors find mistakes missed by company workers.
Still, Schwenk hopes Aviall's leaks will be filled when Loder Drew returns for a second audit this month.
``I'd like to think when they come back in May they'll find less,'' she said. ``It was nice to have someone look over our shoulder.''
Schultz said his company's 1,000 associates find it doesn't always happen that way because his workers are more familiar with the company in a repeat visit.
``Rather than find less, we find more,'' he said.
LENGTH: Medium: 63 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: AP. Bounty hunter accountants Connie Webb and Jerryby CNBWolfe scour piles of papers for a client at Howard Schultz &
Associates in Dallas. color.