Managing accounts receivable.

Examine the five (5) steps to managing accounts receivable. Speculate on the step that is most vulnerable to fraud. Suggest at least two (2) actions that a company can take in order to protect this step from fraud.
Please respond to peer posting: The five steps to managing accounts receivables according to our text are establish payment periods, monitor collections, determine to whom to extend credit, evaluate the liquidity of receivables, and accelerate cash receipts from receivables when necessary. The step that I believe that is most vulnerable to fraud out of all the five steps is to determine whom to extend credit too. Determining whom to extend credit too is the most important, criteria factor of all this because you have to make sure everything is being credited to the right person. All the other four steps mostly align with the action of control of the process before, during, and after, whereas determining the credit is the glue that holds it all together in my opinion. Once the credit is made to whomever everything falls aligned and get released to that person and if its the wrong person then everything gets jeopardized including the company itself, which is why it is very important to determine in these fraud cases. Two actions that I believe can be took to protect this step from fraud are possibly creating a third party company of intensive interviewing of whomever is asking for credit. The interview process will allow extensive research and face to face contact with whomever asking for credit to be analyzed before receiving. Also this will allow them to come to the table with legit documentation of whatever they may have showing them paying things on time or things that is showing good or improvement credit from to be a good candidate. People who commit fraud would probably be hesitate to go through this process whereas someone who has nothing to hide would be ready for it. I would also suggest some type of on-line back ground check they would have to go through where only certain company members would have access to obtain and authorized before entering and proceeding with the process and go through all security questions and proof documentation. This will create more of a personal criteria a company can analyze from whomever before determining if the credit gets issued to whom.