Internal audits evaluate a company’s internal controls, including its corporate governance and accounting processes. These audits ensure compliance with laws and regulations and help to maintain accurate and timely financial reporting and data collection. Internal audits also provide management with the tools necessary to attain operational efficiency by identifying problems and correcting lapses before they are discovered in an external audit.
An internal audit offers risk management and evaluates the effectiveness of many different aspects of the company.
Types of internal audits include financial, operational, compliance, environmental, IT, or for a very specific purpose.
Internal audits provide management and the board of directors with a value-added service where flaws in a process may be caught and corrected prior to external audits.
Similar to external audits, internal audits are conducted through planning, auditing, reporting, and monitoring steps.
Internal audits may enhance the efficiency of operations, motivate employees to adhere to company policy, and allow management to explore specific areas of its operations.
Internal audits play a critical role in a company’s operations and corporate governance, especially now that the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX) holds managers legally responsible for the accuracy of their company's financial statements. SOX also required that a company's internal controls be documented and reviewed as part of their external audit.
In addition to ensuring a company is complying with laws and regulations, internal audits also provide a degree of risk management and safeguard against potential fraud, waste, or abuse. The results of internal audits provide management with suggestions for improvements to current processes not functioning as intended, which may include information technology systems as well as supply-chain management.
Internal audits may take place on a daily, weekly, monthly, or annual basis. Some departments may be audited more frequently than others. For example, a manufacturing process may be audited on a daily basis for quality control, while the human resources department might only be audited once a year.
Internal auditors generally identify a department, gather an understanding of the current internal control process, conduct fieldwork testing, follow up with department staff about identified issues, prepare an official audit report, review the audit report with management, and follow up with management and the board of directors as needed to ensure recommendations have been implemented.
Internal audits may review prior audits to understand management expectations for presentation and data collection. The audit plan often has a checklist to ensure members of the team adhere to broad expectations. The planning stage often ends with a kick-off meeting that launches the audit and communicates the initial information needed.
Auditing procedures used by internal auditors are the same as external auditors. Assessment techniques ensure an internal auditor gathers a full understanding of the internal control procedures. Auditing fieldwork procedures can include transaction matching, physical inventory count, audit trail calculations and account reconciliation.
Internal audit reporting includes a formal report and may include a preliminary or memo-style interim report. An interim report typically includes sensitive or significant results the auditor thinks the board of directors needs to know right away. The final report includes a summary of the procedures and techniques used for completing the audit.
An internal audit may call for follow-up steps to make sure appropriate post-close changes were implemented. For example, an internal financial audit may find severe internal control deficiencies. After six weeks, the internal auditor may be tasked with implementing a small-scope or limited review of the deficiency.
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