I need an Internal Control Systems audit programme for a newly setup Mineral Water Company. Can any body help

Question

Can any body provide me with detailed audit programme to carry out Internal Control Audit or development of system for Finance and Operations department of the Mineral Water Company. Water are the major aspect to be looked into? Is and E-Book on the subject available?

Answer 1

Theoretically also, internal controls means separation of duty, responsibility, authority etc; which are for preventing fraudulent work in the Accounting department.
Internal control system actually means how the work flows through the different departments and how you assign costs at different stages of production.
I am not sure whether you are looking for the above type of answers, I believe you would like to know about Accounting based Internal Control, which Financial controllers are used to perform.First of all you should know what you are controlling, whether costs, performance etc;. Details regarding these are elaborate and you can make sense only if you know Accounting pretty well.
Usually Financial Controllers control only cost. In elaborate fashion they can control anything from performance to overhead and make the system distortion free.
Just off hand models don't suffice you should know how it works for each company from their different prefunctionaries in the department whether they have a large accounting department or small. Whether they have functional accounting in place each controling each aspect etc;.
So it is a time consuming process which I believe can be undertaken only on a case by case basis. Just Mineral Water business itself is not sufficient. Probably you have a small accounting department and elaborate controls are not required or is not very difficult as it looks like.
Let me try to give as what I precieve is a starting point for you. If it is cost you want to control then identify the costs you would like to have an eye on for the habit of crossing budgeted or limits the controller fixes. Circuit breakers should be fitted so that these will be notified to you as it approaches the numbers fixed previously.
Then there are other headers in the accounting system that need to be monitored say for performance. Let us say you fix the asset turn over as a number, see whether it is approaching the fixed rate on a daily basis.
Auditing is on the system formed on your criterions. You run throguh the subsystems and see how it has worked by trailing the accounts involved.

Answer 2

Your audit program is a part of your accounting software program; if, you have gotten a good double entry program to begin with. I'll suggest Peachtree. Also unless you are an accountant I would suggest that you hire one. Even if the most you can manage at the moment is a couple hours a month with a local accounting firm. Believe me the trouble a good accountant can save you is more than worth the dollars you spend.

I worked for a small firm that hadn't hired a good accountant early and they ended up paying tax penalties in excess of one quarter of a million dollars. It delayed them going from a startup to a growing company by 4 years.

Answer 3

Well some of the guys that gave me an internal audit have lasted longer than some others so I'm not really sure!