Client one-pager, internal financial controls

Internal financial controls — what it is and why you need it

What it is. Your auditor is required by law, for most companies, to give a separate opinion on whether the controls that produce your financial statements are properly designed and actually working — not just whether this year's numbers are right, but whether your systems would catch it if they were wrong. In practice that means writing down what your controls are, and then testing a sample of each one across the year.

What we need from you. A document listing your controls process by process — what the control is, who performs it, how often, and what evidence it leaves behind. If you do not have one, that is the first piece of work, and it belongs to you rather than to us. We also need your process notes, your approval matrix, evidence for the samples we select, and reports from your IT team on user access, system changes and backups.