Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
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.
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. Depending on the auditor's evaluation of the effectiveness of the entity-level controls, the auditor can increase or decrease the amount of testing that they will perform.
An example of an entity-level control objective is: "Employees are aware of the Company's Code of Conduct." The COSO 1992–1994 Framework defines each of the five components of internal control (i.e., Control Environment, Risk Assessment, Information & Communication, Monitoring, and Control Activities).
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.
COSO Internal control: integrated framework: In September 1992, the Committee of Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commission (COSO) issued a report titled Internal control: integrated framework, which provided a definition of internal control and a framework for evaluating and improving internal control over systems.
Second, auditors are required to consider the risk of material misstatement through understanding the entity and its environment, including the entity's internal control. [ 3 ] [ 4 ] Financial statement assertions provide a framework to assess the risk of material misstatement in each significant account balance or class of transactions.
The accounting profession has invested significantly in separation of duties because of the understood risks accumulated over hundreds of years of accounting practice. By contrast, many corporations in the United States found that an unexpectedly high proportion of their Sarbanes-Oxley internal control issues came from IT. Separation of duties ...
Internal auditing is an independent, objective assurance and consulting activity designed to add value and improve an organization's operations. It helps an organization accomplish its objectives by bringing a systematic, disciplined approach to evaluate and improve the effectiveness of risk management, control and governance processes. [1]