This landmark report was commissioned by the Committee on Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commission commonly referred to as COSO. It establishes a common definition of internal control that services the needs of different parties for not only assessing their control systems, but also determining how to improve them.
Also included with Internal Control - Integrated Framework is the Addendum to Reporting to External Parties. The addendum ”encourages management that reports to external parties on controls over financial reporting to also cover controls over safeguarding of assets against unauthorized acquisition, use, or disposition.” It defines such controls and provides a suggested form of report.
COSO’s groundbreaking report includes:
Executive Summary
Framework
Reporting to External Parties
Evaluation Tools
The Evaluation Tools are now available on disk. The five evaluation tools, for each of the internal control components identified in the COSO Integrated Framework for Internal Control, are columnar MS Word templates containing internal control risks, objectives, components and elements with spaces and columns for management or other evaluators to record their assessments, observations and conclusions. These worksheets are also printed in the Evaluation Tools volume of this set, pp 3-47.
Everyone in your firm or company who works with internal controls should have his or her own copy.
