Internal audit is a systematic approach to evaluate company's internal controls, regulatory and corporate compliance and accounting processes. Internal audits provide tools necessary for the organization to achieve operational efficiency by providing information it needs for the accomplishment of its goals and correcting slip-ups before they are turn up in an external audit.

Internal auditors monitor, analyze and assess the risks and controls of the organization, review compliance with state and federal policies and laws and make recommendations to ensure the company has the ability to survive in a competitive business environment. The information gathered during the process is used to show how and where a company is performing and where it needs improvement.

The managers are legally held responsible for the correctness of company’s financial statement by Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX). Company's internal controls are also required to be documented and need to be reviewed as part of their external audit. Internal controls are measures implemented by a company to ensure integrity of financial information, promote accountability and prevent fraud.

The internal auditors analyze documents and reports related to company's risks, objectives and performance. They also walk through the specific strategies that have been implemented by the company. Companies mostly rely on outside auditors as they are not related to the company and provides unbiased and objective review of the company operations.

The auditors, during the audit, take notes, review documents and interview employees. It also includes testing employees' knowledge of company policies, compliance rules, objectives and safety standard. Audits may be conducted daily, weekly, monthly or annually. Some departments may be audited more frequently than others. Scheduled audits give time to managers to prepare the required documents and information.

Auditors after completing reviewing documents and conducting interviews prepare a formal report of an audit known as internal audit report. This report shows their negative and positive findings, so that the management knows what is going well and what needs improvement. The report needs to be carefully prepared as it is this point where many internal auditors fail. The report should be clear and impartial, so that it should give clear direction to the company to set its course of action. . It should accurately state the findings and recommendations that are actionable and lead directly to process improvement. The process of internal audit should include proper follow-up with process owners as well as the Board. If an organization fails to follow-up on the implementation of recommendations, it is unlikely that the changes will be made.

Continuing professional development (CPD) is the willful development of knowledge and skills that are required to perform in professional affairs. It is sharpening current skills, or developing them to a new level, or learning new skills related to a certain profession.

In today’s changing world, your skills and knowledge need to be up-to-date to have competitive advantage. Continuing professional development (CPD) plays an important role in maintaining professional competency of the accounting academics. CPD is an ongoing process that continues throughout a professional’s career. It ensures that a professional continues to be competent in the profession. Like most professions, companies and organizations are now prioritizing CPD obligations to ensure a constantly developing workforce.

Continuing professional development (CPD) activities can be carried out through formal education like instructor-led training courses, workshops or seminars etc. Informal approaches can also be used such as work-based learning or mentoring. There are specialist organizations that provide online study material for CPD including CPD CPA courses and structured reading. Accounting professionals can pursue CPD with the flexibility to choose when, where and how they study.

According to a research, professionals get advantage from CPD in a number of ways, including improved productivity, motivation and engagement that contributes to overall performance improvement. CPD is also providing appropriate qualification leading to higher salary earnings over a career, contributing to improved mental wellbeing.

Planning is important for CPD and choosing activities and the most important thing is relevance. It should be made sure that your learning is relevant to your job role and career ambitions. Accounting and finance professionals need to keep their technical skills up-to-date. They need to ensure that they have undertaken suitable and proper development in required technical skills, management skills and personal development.

Some non-finance specific skills are important and may include areas such as:

·       Blockchain and Cryptocurrency

·       Motivational Leadership

·       Team Management

·       Change Management

One should identify and undertake CPD that can help meeting the development needs to ensure that the skills and knowledge are up-to-date. It is also important to keep a record of the CPD as it may be required by current or future employer or to get credits. Keeping record will help you stay on track and identify areas where more learning is needed.

Business environment is changing continuously regardless of the field and industry. Technology will continue to have its impact on roles of accounting professionals, so it is important to understand and keep an eye on the future. You need to have the required knowledge and skills to stay abreast, take advantage and be prepared for the change

While CPD is an effective way to ensure you are not falling behind on latest industry trends and technology, it is equally important to identify areas where you need to secure yourself in future. Speaking or interviewing industry leaders is a useful strategy to know what skills will be in demand in future.

Continuing Professional Development also provides networking opportunities to meet new professionals and indulge into a productive discussion. Online development courses provide vast platform for networking with professionals around the country or even around the globe. Some online courses encourage online networking with other professionals, in form of chat etc, during or after the session which is beneficial for professionals, inculcating an environment of professional development and exchange of knowledge. Keeping connections is essential for careers and business today.

CPD could also help improve your business’s reputation and also result in confident and motivated employees that drives business success. Employees’ productivity and engagement can be increased by providing them with the training and development opportunities. Learning new technical and soft skills and their implementation at workplace can result in increased employee performance and better client relationships. Businesses that invest in providing training and development opportunities to their employees have lower employee turnover, and confident and motivated employees.

Progressive companies invest in the employees’ personal development by providing them time to undertake professional development opportunities and also access to structured workplace training programs to prepare them for all possibilities. This enhances the team’s knowledge and enable them to handle tasks and challenges in an efficient and innovative way. Not only a company can maintain its service and quality standards with the help of continuing professional development, but also promotes employees’ value and a healthy learning culture.

Internal control involves everything that controls risks to an organization. In accounting and auditing, internal control is a process for assuring achievement of an organization’s objectives in operational effectiveness and efficiency, reliable financial reporting, and compliance with laws, regulations and policies.

Internal control plays an essential role in spotting and preventing fraud and protecting organization’s both physical and intangible resources. It is a means by which resources of an organization are directed, monitored and measured. Apart from preventing fraud and complying with laws and regulations, an important aspect of internal controls is to systematically improve businesses in regard to effectiveness and efficiency.

Also referred to as operational controls, internal control is a key element of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) of 1977 and the sarbanes oxley certification Act of 2002, which required improvements in internal control in United States public corporations. Under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, companies are required to perform a Business Fraud Certification risk assessment and assess related controls. This normally includes identifying series of events in which loss, theft or fraud could occur and discovering if the existing control procedures manage the risk to an acceptable level effectively. The risk of manipulating financial reporting by senior management is also a key area of focus in fraud risk assessment. The AICPA, IIA, and ACFE also sponsored a guide published during 2008 that includes a framework for helping organizations manage their fraud risk. 

Internal control accounting systems are the policies and procedures used to ensure accuracy and reliability across accounting reports to:

Prevent fraud and control risk

Proactively identify financial issues

Protect resources (both tangible and intangible) from theft and waste

Operate efficiently and measure progress towards business objectives and goals.

Generate timely, reliable reporting

Comply with applicable laws and regulations

Secure outside funding

Reassure investors

Controls can either be preventative, deterring fraud and mistakes, or detective, identifying issues after they have happened. Working together they can remedy existing problems and help to avoid future ones to strengthen ongoing business activities.

Common types of internal control certification include:

Separation of Duties

A basic control system to ensure that the people responsible for financial reporting are separate from the people tasked with making cash deposits and purchases is by assigning specific duties to each employee that divide accounting responsibilities. Because fraud can occur at any level of an organization, separation of duties is crucial at not just the top, among executive leadership, but at every step of the organizational hierarchy.

Access Controls

An important and easy to implement control that safeguards data and physical assets by setting permission levels and control access to different parts of an accounting system via passwords and electronic access logs to keep unauthorized users out of the system is access control. This provides a way to audit the usage of the system to identify the source of errors or discrepancies. 

Approvals

Authorizing a manager to approve certain transactions and make purchase decisions is an internal control system that prevents unnecessary expenses at every level to minimize waste and reduce incidence of fraud. In larger organizations required approvals may follow a hierarchy requiring multiple layers of agreement being finalized.

Physical Audits of Assets

The most widely used internal accounting control is auditing. Financial audits like cash reconciliations are performed regularly to verify that actual balances match accounting balances. Differences can be analyzed and investigated, where necessary, to result in accurate financial reports. Physical audit of assets is also necessary to be performed daily, monthly, quarterly or annually depending on the asset being audited. Additionally, utilizing surprise or random cash counts, for instance, helps to keep employees honest and focused on performing work meticulously.

Templates

Using standard documents formats, used for financial transactions, such as invoices, Internal controls certification materials requests, inventory receipts and travel expense reports, can help to maintain consistency in record keeping over time.

Trial Balances

Trial balances should be used in conjunction with double-entry accounting to ensure that records are always balanced in order to mitigate errors and frauds that may still exist in a double-entry accounting system. Calculating trial balances on daily or weekly can provide regular insight into the state of the system, allowing to discover and probe discrepancies early on.

Data Backups

Backing up computer files to the cloud safeguards data from loss when computers become corrupted or servers fail. Data backups are one of the most important internal accounting control systems. Loss of financial inputs, past reports and important data or failure in technology can delay reporting and impairing essential accounting functions.