Anyone know about banking/accounting/finance?

I'd think a misplaced decimal or additional zero could wreak quite a bit of havoc, especially if the transaction were international (ie complicated enough already) or the timing was crucial (ie no time to correct it without jeopardizing the whole thing). ??

I work for an accounting office in my Day Job, and the easiest mistake...and the fastest way to state red flags...is to screw up an independent contractor's tax return. Believe me when I say, IRS can and does come down like a ton of bricks when something isn't right about the expense deductions.

Not knowing or misinterpreting important laws relative to a client's taxes. Here's an examply.

An accounting firm once misadvised my employer on how Subchapter S works. They said we could elect the option anytime up until filing time. Not so, as I learned when I researched it. But too late. It was going to cost my employer significant bucks at tax time. When the accountant insisted he was right, he called in his firm's owner who agreed with him. I pulled down the tax book from his bookshelf and read it to them. They just shrugged their shoulders and blew it off. "You learn something new every day." My boss fired them.

Forgetting something related to a mortgage process (something in the process - a certain federal form or requirement, for example; or a miscalculation that results in the buyers needing more money for the closing at the last minute, etc.), so that a real estate sale can't close that day, especially if there is an absolute deadline - ie, either it closes today or the deal falls through... that would be pretty catastophic and one-day sensitive.

And it can be something mundane - a missing signtaure of someone not available, a missing inspection or fee, a missed deadline...a miscalculation and now the buyer needs $5000 more.

Anything like that involving a time sensitive deal will cause large repercussions.

~suki

The problem is with finding a situation or transaction that plays out over just one day. Offhand, the only thing I can think of that would meet that criteria—the error and the consequences occuring in a single day—is a teller's till seriously out of balance together with the need for a very unhappy and much-valued customer to have to come back in.

ETA: Another thing that could happen—and the consequences WOULD be dire—would be that he was overheard commenting on a customer's transaction to another customer or a friend.

I can think of two things off the top of my head. This is more accounting than banking though.

He sends out a really large check written out of the wrong bank account. It bounces, REALLY embarrassing the company and fouling up the process of whatever the money was for.

Or...

He is supposed to email the company P&L and Balance Sheet to someone (for a loan or something), but types the email address wrong and sends it to a competitor. Again... Totally embarrassing, but not fatal to the business (although I guess that depends on the business itself of course).

Fun question. Good luck.