The significance of an internal audit checklist

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Without an adequate plan, it is very difficult for a business to consistently reach its goals and prove to be successful. Like a successful person adheres to his or her to do list, it is also very important for a business to have an Internal Audit Checklist. By having a checklist, it becomes much easier to ascertain what’s going right and which areas of the business need improvement. To ensure that the business functions in an orderly manner and produce high quality products, small and large businesses have implemented quality measures to ensure that quality policies and procedures are followed.

All organizations conduct internal audits to check if quality standards are being met at all levels. The internal audit is intended to assess what a company is doing in order to recognize possible threats to the organization's strength and productivity. Most companies hire professionals from outside the organization to conduct internal audits. Some companies even recruit qualifies auditors so that internal audits can be conducted from time to time across all departments.

The internal audit is conducted to ascertain that things are running as they should be and not how the business makes it seem that they. These audits are very crucial for all businesses. They involve monitoring, analyzing and assessing organizational risks and controls. So not only will the auditor check if the quality standards are being met, he will also check if the correct method or procedure was followed to achieve the quality target and if there were any obstacles or risks involved while doing so. In the process of auditing, there are also possibilities for the auditor to find areas of improvement.

If there are any areas which need to be improved, the internal auditor is expected to give suggestions on how to achieve the target. To avoid biasness in the case of any internal audit, it is important for the auditor to be from a different department or not be a part of the company at all.

All internal audits are conducted with the help of an internal audit checklist. The checklist is usually quite simply made. It consists of a set of pre-defined questions for which there are three options to select for answers – Meets Requirement, Needs Improvement and Does not Meet Requirement. The questions should be relevant to the policies and procedures of a particular process. This way it becomes easier to check if all the documents are in order and are compliant with the quality standards which were set by the company. In case of any non compliance, the internal auditor is expected to file a report with the management team which states which is the area of non compliance, what suggestions were given to improve and also the new target by when this should be achieved.

The Internal Quality Checklist is used so that all aspects of the process are covered during the audit.

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