How to Perform An Internal Audit in Your Business
One of the most fundamental operations conducted on every businesses is the internal auditing, which helps identify and monitoring the internal business procedures within a company or business. When performing internal audits, the organization is assisted to identify more gaps and in their business operations, leading them to identify more opportunities for improvement.
Furthermore, this internal auditing procedure is conducted to determine any conformity or differences of the internal operations of the company with its systems. But the main reason of performing regular internal auditing is to ensure that the company’s protocol and procedures are still being followed as standard procedures of the organization, and then after, these reports are being submitted to the head management for any protocol changes and compliance.
Yet it is possible that the auditing procedure can either be performed by any internal resources, or even by an external resources or third party providers. But before choosing an external agency, the company must make sure that the external agency is one who is skilled in auditing and has an organized internal auditing procedures that would greatly help the company. The company must be informed that the purpose of the internal auditing procedures must not about knowing the mistakes of a certain company but to identify avenues to be improved and to develop the entire welfare of the company. The more the company accommodates internal auditing, the more they would be able to maintain their procedures and the quality of the company’s products, as well as enhance what still needs of any improvement.
Conducting an internal audit can consume a lot of time and resources, since it might be done daily, weekly, or monthly or annually. Here are the basic steps to perform when a company plans to conduct internal auditing.
Firstly, identify the areas that require auditing. You make a copy of the departments of the company, along with their functions that need review by making use of the organization’s policies and procedures made by the regulatory agencies.
The next step is to assess the need of how often auditing needs to be performed for the organization. There are also departments that need only to be evaluated or audited yearly or less frequently, but for those departments that perform manufacturing processes, daily or more frequent auditing needs to be conducted.
The next step is to have a structured approach by marking the schedules of auditing on their own business calendars. This keeps their work to be done consistently and done regularly.
Another thing is that the auditor must be knowledgeable of what needs to be evaluated to a specific area or department, to have an efficient and spontaneous process of auditing.
Lastly, document all results and differences and then report them to the head management for any immediate action and responses.