Accounting and finance: risks and controls

Organisations need funds to initiate and sustain operations, and they need functions and systems to receive, manage and distribute these funds. 

This course provides an overview of the purposes of these functions and systems, and the common risks associated with them. It will consider what controls can be embedded to manage these risks.

Who should do the course?

You will find this course useful if you are:

• a newly qualified internal auditor who needs an overview of the accounting and finance activity,
• a more experienced internal auditor who needs a refresher or is auditing the accounting and finance activity for the first time.

What will I learn?

After completing this course, you will be able to:  

• describe the purposes of the accounting and finance activity,
• identify eight key functions and six key systems within the activity,
• provide examples of risks in each system and their impact,
• express the control objectives and control to treat identified risks, and
• differentiate between fraud and improper activities, and assess the potential for them to occur in accounting and finance systems.

What will I do?

The course comprises three written topics and a final quiz. You will be recorded as having finished the course when you have completed these components, including achieving a minimum grade of 80% on the final quiz. On finishing the course, you’ll be able to download the course summary. We will email your certificate of completion which details the CPE points.

You have 90 days to complete the course; however, it shouldn’t take you more than two hours to complete.

Technical requirements

The course is online so you will need access to an internet-enabled device. The course works best on a laptop or PC with a mouse – some quiz questions are tricky to do on a tablet or touchpad.

CPE competency areas covered

• Governance, risk and control: support a culture of fraud risk awareness at all levels of the organisation.
• Business acumen: understand the organisation's business risks and related internal control activities.

 2 CPE points