You’ll not achieve your organisational objectives without strong Internal Controls

Internal Control is a process, affected by an entity’s board of directors (trustees), management, and other personnel, designed to provide reasonable assurance regarding the achievement of objectives (COSO).

Internal Controls include a wide range of activities that occur throughout the organization, by supervisory and front line personnel.   Typically, management is responsible for developing an appropriate system of internal controls, but every employee is responsible for following and applying those practices.

Every employee within your organisation has a mandate to follow and apply these controls. You might have them in place but if your team fails to follow and apply them, you’re as good as not having them. They don’t work on their own to safeguard your valuables. They need people in the form of the directors and employees.

These controls include segregation of duties. No one is allowed to initiate a transaction, authorise it and as well as finalise it. For example, you can’t have your till operator take a product from the shelf for a client, raises an invoice and as well dispatch the same. There must be other people who come into picture and do the checking. This helps in the event that the till operator made an error in punching the wrong product, the checking person see it and value is preserved.

Other controls include Physical controls. This entails restriction of access to organisations inventory, cash, warehouses, safes and other assets through the issue of locks or other electrical means, policies and procedures, reconciliations and information processing are some of the controls that need to be in place.

You’ll realise that without a strong understanding and implementation of internal controls in your organisation, the achievement of your organisation’s objectives will remain a nightmare.

Register for the INTERNAL CONTROLS program by Institute Of Entrepreneurs Zimbabwe that’s starting today the 4th of April 2023 on +263719592232