INTERNAL CONTROL AS A MEASURE OF PREVENTING ERROR IN MANUFACTURING INDUSTRIES A CASE STUDY OF LIFE BREWERIES ONITSHA

CHAPTER  ONE

1.0     INTRODUCTION

 Internal control is an insupportable part of the accounting profession where importance to growth and posterity of an organization cannot be over emphasized. It is incubate that no one can succeed without an effective and efficient internal control mechanism. Internal control can also be likened to the brake and steering in a business, which if they are not ther, th business train will crash. It can be likened to the laboratory or quality control machinery which controls the quality of production produced by an organization. According to the British auditing comedian, internal control is the whole system of control, financially and otherwise, established by the management in order to carry on the business of the enterprise in an orderly and affluent manner, ensure adherence to management policies, safeguard the assets and secure as far as possible the completeness and accuracy of the records. Control are of fundamental importance to the auditor profession, he must decide to ascertain the best approach to the plan the test he intend to carryout in his audit program, he should decide o what extent he can rely on

Internal system of internal control, he should ascertain the enterprises system of recording and processing transactions and adequately as a basis for the preparation of the financial statement. Horgan and Foster (1990:1910) defined internal control as “the set of accounting and administration control and practice that help to ensure that approved and appropriate decisions are made in an organization, the auditor should therefore ascertain record test and evaluate the operations of any internal control on which he wishes to place reliance in determining the nature, expent of auditing of his audit work on which his opinion on the financial statement will be based. internal control  is best regarded as indicating the whole system of control, financially and otherwise, established by the management in the conduct of a business including, internal cheeks is best regarded as indicating the checks on the day to day transaction which operate continually as part of the routine system, where the work if the one person is proved independently or is complement to the work of another, the object being the prevention or early detection of errors and frauds.

This study is expected to view internal control as a measure of preventing errors in manufacturing industries  with emphasis on special militating factors against internal control policies which includes independency of auditor, low balling, poor distribution of the enterprises and many other factors. Management has recognized internal control as a valuable tool in effectively crrying out its responsibilities and auditors have pressed for improvement in internal control to their effects to be of assistance to management as well as to permit education in audit work made possible by the increase in the credibility of the accounting records.

internal control comprises the whole system of financial and other control established and operating within an organization including internal cheek. internal audit and all other control established.

What is to be noted about internal control is that it is established by the management and it relates to the entire system of control in an orgaizaiton not limited ot accounting matters. Therefore within an organization, a control is seen as any action by management to enhance the livelihood that stable objectives and goals will be achieved.

Therefore the different types of internal control procedures such as in organizations which should define and allocate responsibility and identify lines of reporting, segregation of audits. Physical custody of assets, authorization and approval automatically and management through these areas of control; a kind of internal audit and internal cheek is maintained.

Evaluation of internal control has been of important of any management because of its objectives in any organization to succeed the management needs consistency and effectiveness of internal control producers.