Audit of the security of accounting activities

Levers to secure accounting activities

Quality does not exist without security. Thus, with regard to financial information, it is of good quality provided it is produced in a secure environment. Regarding the accounting activities at the origin of management data and published statements, their security depends on several levers. Firstly, the competence of the teams is an essential prerequisite for quality processing, in particular on aspects of compliance with the accounting standards in force. Knowledge and experience are also major assets for producing information as quickly as possible, especially when business owners are increasingly "impatient" to know the return on their investment. In addition to human resources, IT tools are also essential for keeping secure accounts. The growing volume of business and their increasing complexity have forced entities to equip themselves with systems that are both powerful for processing operations and efficient for data quality. Finally, securing accounting activities requires organizations to allocate the necessary and sufficient resources for the deployment of adequate internal control.

Internal control systems for securing accounting activities

Internal control is the set of measures implemented within the organization and which contribute to risk management, error and fraud being the main ones in accounting. Among these systems, those which participate in the security of accounting activities, and therefore in the production of quality information, are essentially the following:

·        separation of functions : the tasks and accounting treatments are carried out by an organization whose missions are distributed among several employees, in order to avoid that the functions of commitment, accounting, payment and control are combined in the same hand;

·        integration of accounting production : the closer the accounting is to management, the shorter the processing times and the less manual processing;

·        Accountability: the roles between the business lines and the accounting teams for keeping the accounts are clearly established, in particular through job descriptions. Thus, no account must be "orphan", that is to say without assignment to an employee. This accountability also makes it possible to determine the methods of access to IT tools, between consulting the data and recording the accounting entries;

·        Audit trail: any management operation must be able to be traced from its initiation to its accounting recording and then its aggregation during the establishment of the annual accounts.

Audit points relating to the security of accounting activities

The quality of accounting information interests internal auditors in Dubai and statutory auditors, the former more particularly on the accounting production process, the latter on the finished product, namely the annual accounts. Thus, by virtue of their difference, the internal auditors and the statutory auditors complement each other in providing an opinion on the level of security of the accounting activities. It is therefore imperative that these two actors coordinate in order to avoid duplication and oversights in terms of control, but also to optimize the audit of accounting treatments. Thus, with regard to the risk control systems identified above, the internal auditors will ensure that the following controls are carried out within their organization:

·        regular reconciliation by an independent entity between management data and accounting;

·        formal justification of all the balances of the accounts used by the organization, without exception of amount or volume of transactions;

·        effective limitation of logical access to accounting tools, both in consultation and in production;

·        Clearance within a reasonable time frame of any transaction charged to a suspense account (or technical).

On the basis of this internal audit work, the statutory auditor will be in good condition to carry out his due diligence.

Read also: Advantages and criticalities of adopting a new business management software

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