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Internal control, as defined by accounting and auditing, is a process for assuring of an organization's objectives in operational effectiveness and efficiency, reliable financial reporting, and compliance with laws, regulations and policies. A broad concept, internal control involves everything that controls risks to an organization.
This standard contains the standards over performing an audit of internal control over financial reporting that is integrated with an audit of financial statements. The auditor must test entity-level controls that are important to the auditor's conclusion about whether the company has effective internal control over financial reporting .
Management control as an interdisciplinary subject. A management control system (MCS) is a system which gathers and uses information to evaluate the performance of different organizational resources like human, physical, financial and also the organization as a whole in light of the organizational strategies pursued.
According to the Institute of Management Accountants (IMA), "Management accounting is a profession that involves partnering in management decision making, devising planning and performance management systems, and providing expertise in financial reporting and control to assist management in the formulation and implementation of an organization ...
It serves to require the auditor to understand the client's accounting system and internal control system and to assess control risk and inherent risk. The objective is to determine the nature, timing and extent of substantive procedures in order to reduce audit risk to an acceptable low level.
An IT audit is different from a financial statement audit.While a financial audit's purpose is to evaluate whether the financial statements present fairly, in all material respects, an entity's financial position, results of operations, and cash flows in conformity to standard accounting practices, the purposes of an IT audit is to evaluate the system's internal control design and effectiveness.
Information systems play a key role in internal control systems, as they produce reports, including operational, financial and compliance-related information, which make the operation and control of the business possible. In a broader sense, effective communication must ensure information flows down, across and up the organization.
These control criteria are to be used by the practitioner/examiner (Certified Public Accountant, CPA) in attestation or consulting engagements to evaluate and report on controls of information systems offered as a service. The engagements can be done on an entity wide, subsidiary, division, operating unit, product line or functional area basis.