Your Accounting System

YOU CAN’T OPERATE SYSTEMATICALLY UNLESS YOU HAVE A SYSTEM. That’s why we offer a FREE Internal Control Questionnaire (ICQ) and consultation to our clients. We offer additional assistance, if needed, to strengthen your accounting system.

The ICQ is designed to help evaluate your accounting system or system of internal control. It’s commonly used early in a financial audit to determine the extent testing of an organization’s general ledger account balances will be needed for the audit. Combined with tests of the existing controls, it can be used to used to support the auditor’s opinion on the financial statements.

The advantages of having effective internal control

You need internal controls to:

  • ensure that your organization’s activities are carried out in accordance with your objectives.
  • safeguard assets by protecting your physical and monetary assets from fraud, theft and errors.
  • improve performance by providing more timely and accurate information to measure against targets.
  • reduce exposure to risks or the possibility of unexpected and unfavorable events.
  • ensure proper financial reporting.

 

The best-run organizations have effective systems of internal control. An effective system of internal control means an effective accounting system.

 

Why an evaluation of your accounting system?

You may not want or need an audit, but completing this questionnaire still offers you
HUGE benefits, namely:
    • It will help to identify areas of weakness within your organization’s structure, thus giving you
      an opportunity to strengthen it.
    • It can lead to improvements that will reduce the cost of future accounting, bookkeeping and tax
      services you receive, including audits and other financial statement services.
    • Your organization will be better organized and will operate more systematically if the
      improvements are made.

 

Here’s how our Internal Control or Accounting System program works:

You’ll complete the ICQ. It should take you within an hour – or more, if your system is more involved. The ICQ will help you identify your internal controls in effect.

We’ll assign a score to your ICQ results. We’ll call you, or you can call us, three days after you
complete it. We’ll discuss with you your score.

Depending on your score, we’ll recommend further action to increase it, or recommend testing
of your controls to evaluate the design of the controls, and whether they’re operating as planned.