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Entity-level Controls
Entity-level controls are controls that help to ensure that management directives pertaining to the entire entity are carried out. They are the second level of a to understanding the risks of an organization. Generally, entity refers to the entire company. Regulation surrounding entity-level controls Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 As a result of several accounting and auditing scandals, congress passed the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002. Section 404 of the act requires company management to assess and report on the effectiveness of the company's internal control. It also requires the company's independent auditor to attest to management's disclosures regarding the effectiveness of internal control. The act also created the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB). PCAOB Auditing Standard 2201 The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) became the primary regulator of audits of publicly traded companies. In June 2007, the PCAOB adopted Auditing Standard 2201 (S ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Segregation Of Duties
Separation of duties (SoD), also known as segregation of duties is the concept of having more than one person required to complete a task. It is an administrative control used by organisations to prevent fraud, sabotage, theft, misuse of information, and other security compromises. In the political realm, it is known as the separation of powers, as can be seen in democracies where the government is separated into three independent branches: a legislature, an executive, and a judiciary. General description Separation of duties is a key concept of internal controls. Increased protection from fraud and errors must be balanced with the increased cost/effort required. In essence, SoD implements an appropriate level of checks and balances upon the activities of individuals. R. A. Botha and J. H. P. Eloff in the '' IBM Systems Journal'' describe SoD as follows. Separation of duty, as a security principle, has as its primary objective the prevention of fraud and errors. This objective i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Employee Retention
Employee retention is the ability of an organization to retain its employees and make sure the sustainability of employees. Employee retention can be represented by a simple statistic (for example, a retention rate of 80% usually indicates that an organization kept 80% of its employees in a given period). Employee retention is also the strategies employers use to try to retain the employees in their workforce. A distinction should be drawn between low-performing employees and top performers, and efforts to retain employees should be targeted at valuable, contributing employees. Employee turnover is a sign of deeper issues that have not been resolved, which may include low employee morale, absence of a clear career path, lack of recognition, poor employee-manager relationships or many other issues. A lack of job satisfaction and commitment to the organization can also cause an employee to withdraw and begin looking for other opportunities. Pay sometimes plays a smaller role in inducin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Committee Of Sponsoring Organizations Of The Treadway Commission
The Committee of Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commission (COSO) is an organization that develops guidelines for businesses to evaluate internal controls, risk management, and fraud deterrence. In 1992 (and subsequently re-released in 2013), COSO published the ''Internal Control - Integrated Framework,'' commonly used by businesses in the United States to design, implement, and conduct systems of internal control over financial reporting and assessing their effectiveness. History In 1985, COSO began as a private sector initiative to investigate the causal factors that lead to fraudulent financial reporting as a result of a number of accounting scandals in the 1970s and mid-1980s. This initiative was termed the National Commission on Fraudulent Financial Reporting; the first president of the Commission was James C. Treadway, Jr., a former Commissioner of the US Securities and Exchange Commission, and therefore the initiative was commonly called the "Treadway Commission". ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Analytical Procedures (finance Auditing)
Analytical procedures are one of many financial audit processes which help an auditor understand the client's business and changes in the business, and to identify potential risk areas to plan other audit procedures. It is also the evaluation of financial information made by a study of plausible or credible relationships among both financial and non financial data Use and stage Analytical procedures are performed at three stages of audit: at start, in middle and at end of audit. These three stages are risk assessment procedures, substantive analytical procedures, and final analytical procedures. * Risk assessment procedures are used to assist the auditor to better understand the business and to plan the nature, timing and extent of audit procedures. * Substantive analytical procedures are used to obtain evidential matter about particular assertions related to account balances or classes of transactions. * Final analytical procedures are used as an overall review of the financia ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Governance
Governance is the process of interactions through the laws, social norm, norms, power (social and political), power or language of an organized society over a social system (family, tribe, formal organization, formal or informal organization, a territory or across territories). It is done by the government of a state (polity), state, by a market (economics), market, or by a social network, network. It is the decision-making among the actors involved in a collective problem that leads to the creation, reinforcement, or reproduction of social norms and institutions". In lay terms, it could be described as the political processes that exist in and between formal institutions. A variety of entities (known generically as governing bodies) can govern. The most formal is a government, a body whose sole responsibility and authority is to make binding decisions in a given geopolitical system (such as a sovereign state, state) by establishing laws. Other types of governing include an o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Change Management
Change management (sometimes abbreviated as CM) is a collective term for all approaches to prepare, support, and help individuals, teams, and organizations in making organizational change. It includes methods that redirect or redefine the use of resources, business process, budget allocations, or other modes of operation that significantly change a company or organization. Organizational change management (OCM) considers the full organization and what needs to change, while change management may be used solely to refer to how people and teams are affected by such organizational transition. It deals with many different disciplines, from behavioral and social sciences to information technology and business solutions. As change management becomes more necessary in the business cycle of organizations, it is beginning to be taught as its own academic discipline at universities. There are a growing number of universities with research units dedicated to the study of organizational cha ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Self-assessment
In social psychology, self-assessment is the process of looking at oneself in order to assess aspects that are important to one's identity. It is one of the motives that drive self-evaluation, along with self-verification and self-enhancement. Sedikides (1993) suggests that the self-assessment motive will prompt people to seek information to confirm their uncertain self-concept rather than their certain self-concept and at the same time people use self-assessment to enhance their certainty of their own self-knowledge. However, the self-assessment motive could be seen as quite different from the other two self-evaluation motives. Unlike the other two motives, through self-assessment people are interested in the accuracy of their current self view, rather than improving their self-view. This makes self-assessment the only self-evaluative motive that may cause a person's self-esteem to be damaged. Functions If through self-assessing there is a possibility that a person's self-conce ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Public Company Accounting Oversight Board
The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) is a nonprofit corporation created by the Sarbanes–Oxley Act of 2002 to oversee the audits of public companies and other issuers in order to protect the interests of investors and further the public interest in the preparation of informative, accurate and independent audit reports. The PCAOB also oversees the audits of broker-dealers, including compliance reports filed pursuant to federal securities laws, to promote investor protection. All PCAOB rules and standards must be approved by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Purpose In creating the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB), the Sarbanes-Oxley Act required that auditors of U.S. public companies be subject to external and independent oversight for the first time in history. Previously, the profession was self-regulated. Congress vested the PCAOB with expanded oversight authority over the audits of brokers and dealers registered with the SE ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Code Of Conduct
A code of conduct is a set of rules outlining the norms, rules, and responsibilities or proper practices of an individual party or an organization. Companies' codes of conduct A company code of conduct is a set of rules which is commonly written for employees of a company, which protects the business and informs the employees of the company's expectations. It is appropriate for even the smallest of companies to create a document containing important information on expectations for employees. The document does not need to be complex or have elaborate policies. Failure of an employee to follow a company's code of conduct can have negative consequences. In '' Morgan Stanley v. Skowron'', 989 F. Supp. 2d 356 (S.D.N.Y. 2013), applying New York's faithless servant doctrine, the court held that a hedge fund's employee engaging in insider trading in violation of his company's code of conduct, which also required him to report his misconduct, must repay his employer the full $31 millio ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Financial Statements
Financial statements (or financial reports) are formal records of the financial activities and position of a business, person, or other entity. Relevant financial information is presented in a structured manner and in a form which is easy to understand. They typically include four basic financial statements accompanied by a management discussion and analysis: # A balance sheet or statement of financial position, reports on a company's assets, liabilities, and owners equity at a given point in time. # An income statement—or profit and loss report (P&L report), or statement of comprehensive income, or statement of revenue & expense—reports on a company's income, expenses, and profits over a stated period. A profit and loss statement provides information on the operation of the enterprise. These include sales and the various expenses incurred during the stated period. # A statement of changes in equity or statement of equity, or statement of retained earnings, reports on t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
