Internal Process and Controls

One of the best ways to avoid financial fraud and misstatements of financial information is to make sure your company has the proper processes and procedures in place by design. Sometimes it takes a trained, objective professional from the outside to 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.

The fraud detection specialists at Schultz, Wood & Rapp 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.

To help your company develop strong set of internal processes and control, we’ll help you implement the approporiate segregation of duties such that duties are divided among different people to reduce risk of error or inappropriate actions. No one person should ever have control over all aspects of any financial transaction.

We’ll make sure transactions are authorized by a person delegated approval authority when the transactions are consistent with policy and funds are available and ensure records are routinely reviewed and reconciled, by someone other than the preparer or transactor, to determine that transactions have been properly processed.

We’ll help your business make certain that equipment, inventories, cash and other property are secured physically, counted periodically, and compared with item descriptions shown on control records and provide 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.

We’ll guide your company on the best method to document policies and procedures and make them accessible to employees. Your 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.

We’ll also review your business operations to ascertain whether the results are consistent with established objectives and goals and whether the operations are being carried out as planned.