In order to be successful in business, a company must be able to track their assets. This tracking system is typically done by a bookkeeper and must be reliable in order to be effective. The way a company ensures their financial records are reliable is by setting up a system of internal controls. Internal controls allow a company to protect its assets from fraud and theft as well as ensuring records are kept accurately by reducing errors and irregularities (Keisco, Kimmel and Weygandt, 2008). Internal controls work by assigning responsibility, separating duties to provide checks and balances, hiring an independent verification agent and through the use of technology and physical controls. In many instances, internal controls are …show more content…
al., 2008). Internal controls are regulated by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002. This act assigns responsibility for a company’s internal controls on its executives and directors (Kiesco et.al., 2008). This assignment of responsibility forces the company to use effective internal controls by making a certain group responsible. The act also established the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board which regulates the activities of auditors. Together, assigning responsibility and defining the standards of auditors, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 helps to safeguard a company’s investments, assets and future successes by discouraging fraud and theft. A company that follows the requirements of the act insures to investors that their reporting is accurate. However, a company whose internal controls show deficiencies, or who chooses not to follow the Sarbanes-Oxley requirements provides no insurance to investors that their reporting is accurate. This would cause investors to sell their stock and new investors to avoid the company because of the potential that reports are inaccurate. Stock prices would, in turn, suffer as confidence in the company’s financial practices and reporting is questioned. With all the insurances provided by internal controls and Sarbanes-Oxley, a company still faces issues with accuracy in bookkeeping records and accounting. The human element required intrinsically by the
With every internal control weakness a company needs to identify either a control policy or control procedure that will help prevent error or fraud from occuring in the future. Based on my suggestions as to what weaknesses existed at Goodner Brothers, Inc. I have suggested the policies or procedures that could be implemented to help prevent future issues. The internal control I would implement to hinder employee access to the accounting system would be to secure all computer programs with individual usernames and passwords to prevent access from others. The bookkeeper should be the only employee with access to the accounting system and to test this procedure the company would need to try and access the software without a username and password. To monitor the storage warehouse situation, the company should install computer scanning systems and video cameras at each location to supervize whether tires are being scanned in and out upon delivery and pick-up and to determine who and when these transactions are taking place. Semi-annual reviews should be conducted by sales managers to evaluate their sales representative. In addition, strengthening the tone at the top mentality should lie in the hands of each owner by personally reviewing all sales managers to create a top down effect.
The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, also known as the SOX Act, is enacted on July 30, 2002 by Congress as a result of some major accounting frauds such as Enron and WorldCom. The main objective of this act is to recover the investors’ trust in the stock market, and to prevent and detect corporate accounting fraud. I will discuss the background of Sarbanes-Oxley Act, and why it became necessary in the first section of this paper. The second section will be the act’s regulations for the management, external auditors, and companies, mainly publicly-traded companies, and the cost and benefits of the act. The last section will be the discussion of the quality of financial reporting since SOX and the effectiveness of SOX provisions to prevent another financial statements fraud, such as Enron and WorldCom from occurring in the future.
Internal controls represent an organization’s processes and procedures used to meet its goals and objectives and serve as a defense in safeguarding assets and preventing and detecting errors, fraud, and abuse. Effective internal controls provide reasonable assurance that an organization’s objectives are achieved through (1) reliable financial reporting, (2) compliance with laws and regulations, and (3) effective and efficient operations. The passing of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, as well as the numerous corporate frauds and bankruptcies over the past decade—including some
Senator Paul Sarbanes and Representative Michael Oxley created the act to keep businesses from producing false financial documents just to get investors to invest into the company because it appears that the business is doing very well. Companies like Enron under this new act couldn’t produce the false accounting statements without first having an auditor coming in and checking over the inventories or book keeping data. Now investors can relax a little more and not worry that the financial statements are falsified or are generalized and rounded up to make the company look good. Investors can trust that the auditors are doing their job and verifying the books and data for those companies.
The Sarbanes-Oxley Act consists of 11 titles that set significant requirements and consequences for non-compliance in terms of transparency of financial reporting and accountability of leadership for publicly held companies. The Act established the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB), which is an independent, nongovernmental and non-profit organization created to oversee the audits of public companies. The Act also set requirements for the audit committee, the CEO and CFO in regards to certifying financial statements, prohibits loans to executive officers, require real-time disclosure of information, changed the deadline for insiders to report trading in company 's securities to within two business days of the transaction, provides for the protection of whistleblowers, and imposes sanctions and penalties on violators of the provisions of the Act (“Corporate scandals, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 and equity prices,” 2007, p. 83). All of these provisions are used to help improve accuracy and reliability of corporate disclosures by ensuring transparency, neutrality, and accountability in reporting financials, in order to protect investors.
The Sarbanes Oxley Act of 2002 enacted many new legislations including the creation of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, which inspects audits of public companies, increased regulations on auditor independence, prohibiting certain non-audit activities, increased corporate responsibility of company executives and management for financial reports, timely and accurate disclosure requirements, and management’s responsibility to design and test the effectiveness of internal controls. These legislations are just a few of the key sections of the Sarbanes Oxley Act among many others and have has a great impact on public auditors and the audit process of public companies. Although many of these new requirements and regulations require more detail, time, and money to implement, they help to protect the public interest of investors and restore the public’s trust in auditors and the financial reports of corporations and business that must follow the policies the forth in the Sarbanes Oxley Act.
An effective system of internal control limits the probability that fraud will take place. Within an effective system on internal control an organization will safeguard their assets, encourage employees to follow company policy, promote operational efficiency, strive towards the most accurate and reliable accounting records, and complies with all legal requirements. Internal controls not only helps to eliminate fraud but also waste and inefficiency.
Sarbanes-Oxley Act was enforced in the past but caught everyone’s attention when drastic audit failures from Enron and Worldcom happened. An enhanced act (SOX) was enacted in 2002 improving audit quality. In particular, section 404 provides guidance of assessment to internal control. For an accounting perspective, internal control is a system for internal and external auditors to measure performance and recommend the improvement of the control. It is definitely correct that both enforcement and the system are to address the risks of frauds. In the meantime, a new regulatory agency, the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) was created to monitor the work of public accountants. Among SOX and the PCAOB, accounting
After the demise of Enron due to accounting fraud, the Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) Act was created by the government to establish penalties for corporate fraud and require companies to have a code of ethics along with transparency accounting for shareholders (Ferrell, Fraedrich, & Ferrell, 2013). In other words, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act provides a set of checks and balances making it more difficult for a corporation to defraud shareholders. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act created the Public Company Oversight Board, which is responsible for monitoring accounting firms and establishing the rules that must be followed (Ferrell, et al, 2013).
The internal control of physical controls is also being utilized by LJB Company. Physical controls “relate to the safeguarding of assets and enhance the accuracy and reliability of the accounting records” (Kimmel, Weygandt, & Kieso, 2013, p. 342). The accountant secures the paychecks in a safe in his office before he leaves for weekend. By securing the paychecks in the safe, other individuals are unable to get to the checks during the weekend. Although there are improvements that need be made to the paycheck process, locking the paychecks in a safe over the weekend is a strong internal control that protects a valuable asset.
Internal controls are measures put into place that allow for more accurate and deliberate representation of a company’s financial data. Internal controls also serve to protect a company’s assets from theft, fraud or misuse. With internal controls in place it becomes more visible to recognize if someone is stealing or misusing funds in any way. Internal controls also help to zoom in on errors or unintentional mistakes. When these errors are picked up on early it eliminates future problems for the company and its investors down the road.
The final responsibility for the integrity of an SEC registrant’s internal controls lies on the management team. U.S. companies need to refer to a comprehensive framework of internal control when assessing the quality of financial reporting to determine that financial statements are being presented under General Accepted Accounting Principles, GAAP. The widely used framework is referred as COSO, Committee of Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commission, sponsored by the following organizations American Accounting Association, the American Institute of CPA’s, Financial Executives International, the Institute of Internal Auditors, and the Institute of Management Accountants. COSO’s defines internal control as:
Internal control refers the process implement by the corporate board of directors, managers and other staff, and provide reasonable assurance . The purpose of internal control is to ensure the reliability and accuracy of financial reporting, efficiency of operations, and compliance with laws and regulations.
Internal controls refer to different measures employed by organizations so as to ensure attainment of the entity’s objective, goals and missions. With the aim of reducing wastes, theft or the misuse of organization resources specifically funds, different policies and procedures are enforced on the transactions to ensure appropriate transactions management. These provide the necessary step to allowing controls into the resource allocation means. In defining internal controls, one realizes they are different processes designed by organizations to aid in governance the management and execution of roles by employees. These
This work aims to understand the importance of the internal control in organizations to achieve the objectives established but first we have to know the definition of internal control that is the process, incurred by the board of directors or the administration and other personal that is designed to provide management with reasonable assurance on the achievement of the effectiveness of operations, the reliability of financial information and compliance with laws