A company's management is concerned about the safeguarding of assets and ensuring the reliability of financial information. What do you mean by Accounting Controls? What are the objectives of internal controls relating t

Accounting controls comprise the plan of organisation and all methods and procedures that are concerned mainly with and relate to, the safeguarding of assets and the reliability of the financial information. They generally include such controls as the system of authorisation and approval, separation of duties concerned with record keeping and accounting reports from those concerned with operations of assets custody, physical controls over assets and internal auditing. Internal control relating to accounting system aims at ensuring that: the transactions are executed in accordance with the management's authorisation; all transactions are promptly recorded in an appropriate manner to permit the preparation of financial information and to maintain accountability for assets; the access to assets is permitted only in accordance with the management authorisation; the assets are reviewed and verified at reasonable intervals and appropriate action is taken with regard to the variances. It can safely be said that scope of internal control is much wider than that of accounting controls. Thus, internal checks, internal audit, quantitative controls, budgetary controls etc. can be said to be a part of the accounting controls, in so far as they deal with quantitative aspects. On a wider footing, accounting controls, operational controls, policy planning/review, reporting etc. can be said to be a part of internal control.