Originally Posted by
Rep
Interesting, in that everyone who's posting here has leapt to the presumption that this is theft or that a crime has been perpetrated. Lots of discussion about physical controls such as fences, CCTV and that it is a customs bonded warehouse or that management didn't have appropriate insurance.
I don't know what has happened. But I can postulate an alternative based on what happened elsewhere and have have resulted in a loss that was five-fold at AUD$17.2m in 2006.
API is an Australian Health and Beauty manufacturer, distributor and retailer and operates a number of brands including Priceline Pharmacy.
In 2006 after the implementation of a new IT system, year end stock takes revealed that over $17m of working capital (mainly inventory) was unaccounted for - it had simply disappeared. What the system said was on the shelf in the warehouses was not physically in existence and after reviewing everything the loss of $17.2m had to be taken up in their account as one-off expense. Forensic accountants were brought in but the new ERP system didn't help them locate or trace where all the working capital had gone with a broker asking the CEO at the AGM, where did it go and did you check under the cushions on the couch? The CEO left soon after but to this day no-one really knows what happened to the inventory of $17.2m.
One theory is that the ERP system integration didn't work as intended. To simplify this, let's say a chemist orders some stock from API, a pick list is generated at the warehouse and the warehouse picks the stock at the warehouse and sends it off. Now the chemist store will receive the stock, put it on their shelves and sell it. If the ERP system doesn't record that the order was picked, packaged and processed then it will never know the stock actually left the warehouse, and if the ERP system never records the stock left the warehouse then it won't invoice the items.
In my experience, most pick lists don't show the price just the items and the count (unless they are pick list/invoices) so the chemist won't pay until they get the invoice which they will match against the packing slip/picklist. If the ERP system doesn't generate an invoice then the chemist won't pay for the stock and the packing slip/pick list will stay in the drawer.
At some stage someone might notice that there are bunch of 'unfulfilled orders' that never got processed and noting they went back in time, then delete them off the system. Even then, no-one would know whether all, some or none of these unfulfilled orders were actually sent.
The net result is that all the stock left the warehouse legitimately, but there's no record that those items left, no change to the inventory records and no billing of the items. And if the orders were recorded as never fulfilled and deleted then there's very little that can be traced EXCEPT if someone tried to match the number of courier labels to the number of orders processed but still wouldn't necessarily know what went out merely where it went.
So if this is what happened at API there would few records to show so maybe it's a plausible explanation. It also wouldn't be an insured loss if there was no evidence of actual theft.
In the case of QEX, we don't have the pertinent details - we have talk of inside job, organised crime etc because of the size of the loss but none of us including the management of QEX seems to really know.