Nottinghamshire Police is piloting a powerful new software system that speeds up the investigation of complex fraud cases.

The FACET system, developed in collaboration with WPC Software, records and tracks details of fraud and asset recovery investigations, and automatically prepares case files for court.

All inventory items such as exhibits, witness statements and other evidence are logically presented and linked together, making it much easier to file and retrieve important information.

Designed to be used by finance and fraud investigation teams, FACET provides full case management facilities and ensures that all exhibits are properly logged and ready for presentation in court.

Officers can also transfer bank statements directly to spreadsheets using sophisticated word recognition technology, which means they no longer have to input information manually. This greatly reduces the time that police spend on preparing fraud investigations.

In addition, FACET includes a tasking facility that allows officers to assign tasks with a priority level. Users are informed of overdue tasks as soon as they log-on to the system.

Detective Constable Kevin Pratt, a fraud investigator with Nottinghamshire Police, said: “Many police fraud investigation teams have limited manpower and finite resources. This means that complex fraud cases can sometimes take years to prepare. FACET changes all that.”

“The ability to scan bank and credit card statements has resulted in huge savings in time and manpower. Work that used to take two to three weeks now takes just two to three days. This means that we can bring cases to court much more quickly.”