Reference no: EM132933648

Question - Okanagan Valley Distillery (OVD) is a craft brewery located in Kelowna, BC. It was started by John Hopps in 2000. Since 1995, John had been brewing beer in his basement. At the encouragement of his friends and family, John decided to formalize his operations and began to sell beer commercially in 2000. OVD was very successful and expanded rapidly. It has brewery locations in Kelowna, Vancouver, Calgary, and Saskatoon. OVD has become very popular at restaurants in Seattle and now exports about 10% of its production to the US. Last year, OVD took out a bank loan to finance the purchase of new equipment. Accounts receivable and inventory are held as collateral for the loan.

Sales consist of sales to liquor stores and restaurants. Salespeople negotiate and establish discounts. They also set credit limits for their customers. Sales are recorded on manual sales input sheets and are faxed to the accounting department for input. The A/R clerk inputs the orders, creates the invoices and mails the invoices to the customers. Customers are directed to remit payment to either head office or to their local salesperson. All forms of payment are accepted (cash, cheque, credit card). At head office, the receptionist opens the mail each day. She collects any payments received and deposits them at the end of the week. She sends the A/R clerk a summary of the payments that were received, which the receptionist tracks in Excel. The A/R clerk processes new customers, adjustments and bad debt write offs.

Required - Identify the weaknesses in the internal controls of OVD, discuss the implications of the weaknesses (the "what can go wrong") and a reasonable recommendation to address each weakness.