At times you may need a trained outside professional to help you evaluate your company's operations to determine if the appropriate controls are in place to ensure proper handling of resources and to protect yourself from employee theft.

We assess your internal control systems to determine the efficiency and effectiveness of your operating procedures. Then we make recommendations that help your company become stronger and more profitable by correcting any inefficient or ineffective operating procedures we find.

Why Should a Small Business Care About Internal Controls?

Obviously, small businesses should care about internal controls to protect their assets and reduce the risk of fraud. Additionally, the growing awareness of fraud has caused investors and other companies to focus on stronger internal controls at the smaller, private companies. Not that they have to spend millions or even thousands of dollars to implement internal controls – they shouldn’t – they don’t have that regulatory requirement. But, understanding internal controls and how they can protect themselves and their small business is important.

Many small businesses are finding that banks or other financial institutions want to see stronger evidence of internal controls in the companies that they lend money to, and even from their audit firms.  Reasons a small business may want to create strong internal controls:

• Strong internal controls focus on getting the financial statements right – working on internal controls now will address and prevent future or potential problems

• An outside party such as an investor, banker or accountant recommendation

• To solve present business problems and/or help prevent fraud from occurring

• The potential to go public

• Working with a Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) compliant customer may require it

Good internal controls are essential no matter how small the company, for many valid reasons. Fraud prevention, embezzlement detection, and accurate financials are all reasons to follow good internal control practices. Implementing controls into the financial accounting software alone isn't enough to ensure compliance; it takes some people power too. Since most small business owners have very little accounting background, accountants are necessary to play a key advisory role in helping a business design and implement sound internal controls. Many private companies are seeing benefits from implementing internal control provisions relating to accountability, independent audits, internal controls and document retention.

What we can do for you...

• Assist in the implementation of segregation of duties so that duties are divided, or segregated, among different people to reduce risk of error or inappropriate actions. No one person has control over all aspects of any financial transaction.


• Assist in you in making sure transactions are authorized by a person delegated approval authority when the transactions are consistent with policy and funds are available.


• Assist in ensuring records are routinely reviewed and reconciled, by someone other than the preparer or transactor, to determine that transactions have been properly processed.


• Assist in maiking certain that equipment, inventories, cash and other property are secured physically, counted periodically, and compared with item descriptions shown on control records.


• Assist you in providing employees with appropriate training and guidance to ensure they have the knowledge necessary to carry out their job duties, are provided with an appropriate level of direction and supervision, and are aware of the proper channels for reporting suspected improprieties.


• Assist yo in setting document policies and procedures and making them accessible to employees. The documented policies and procedures provide day-to-day guidance to your staff and continuation of duties in the event of prolonged employee absences or turnover.


• Assist you in reviewing operations to ascertain whether results are consistent with established objectives and goals and whether the operations are being carried out as planned.