Financial Education - Effective strategies for using internal control mechanisms

Within each company it is necessary to employ mechanisms to safeguard resources, promote efficiency and obtain reliable financial information. Thus, internal control emerges as a strategic management system, composed of a set of plans, methods, principles, standards, processes and procedures to verify the effectiveness of the internal control system.

Internal control also consists of methods, principles, standards, processes and procedures to verify and evaluate all the activities and operations carried out in the organization, as well as the way in which information and resources are managed, and whether such management is in accordance with the policies drawn up by the management and, in turn, subject to the legal regulations in force.

According to the above, internal control is considered as one of the fundamental pillars of accounting, through which it is possible to measure the degree of vulnerability and strength that a company has in the achievement of its most routine and elementary processes, it also constitutes a set of procedures, policies, guidelines and organizational plans.

The purpose of these is to ensure efficiency, security and order in the financial and administrative accounting management, such as the safeguarding of assets, fidelity of the information process, adequate records, compliance with formal duties as passive subjects. As well as, policies defined in the accounting area, among other aspects.

In consideration, internal control is defined in different ways and consequently applied in different ways. This is possibly its greatest inherent difficulty in the search for solutions to it, an attempt has been made to gather in a single definition the various common elements that allow reaching consensus on the matter.