Creating a sustainable internal controls program for a globally-known historically black college / university. Also, completed a business process improvement engagement for the Procure to Pay and Student Financial Services business processes. Currently developing and implementing key governance, risk and compliance documents for the Finance Department, including financial policies, Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs), Management reporting, etc.
Challenge
To design and implement an internal controls program to facilitate management’s attestation on the operational effectiveness of internal controls over Financial Reporting.
Complete the initiative above in order to enable the external auditors to rely upon the internal controls of the university and therefore, reducing the auditors’ level of effort and the annual financial statement audit fees.
The Solution
We performed a risk assessment of the key financial reporting business processes reporting implications and identified the key processes that required documenting and assessing.
Leveraged established best practices and standards (e.g. COSO, COBiT, NIST Cyber Security, and ISO standards) to facilitate the test of control design of key financial reporting processes, including Financial Reporting, Procure-to-Pay, Faculty Practice Plan, Grants and Contracts, Property, Plant & Equipment, Period-End Close, Information Technology Controls, and other business processes.
Benefits
The project is ongoing and we continue to add value by identifying significant control gaps and/or internal control deficiencies that require addressing. In addition, our recommendations include opportunities to leverage technology-based solutions to improve the business processes and the related internal control environments.
Project:
Internal Controls / Business Process Improvement