INTRODUCTION
1.1BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
One problem of management is planning but planning is useless if it is not implemented. The success of any plan is based on adequate control and monitoring of the achieve the requirement objectives.
However, this is a research on the implication of accounting as an internal control mechanism in Enugu State Ministries.
Accounting is defined as the art of recording and giving result of business transaction to the client. It is a medium of communication, pricing and transmitting and receiving information. Accounting therefore must have its origin to the time when man began to entrust the man agreement of his state to another usually his servant long time age.
However, accounting in the sense we know it today certainly has its origin between 14th and 16th century. As commerce developed the number that participated in enterprises increased more significantly.
Those who provide financial backing for venture would often not want to be involved in day to day management of the enterprises.
Those who were not directly involved needed summaries of the transaction so that they would understand the enterprises position without the need for them to go through the books in detail.
Early Greek and Roman accounts were kept on the charge and discharge principles centered on the need to keep tract of assets and exercise control over those entrusted with property.
The period 1948 witnessed a meritorious event in the development of accounting and auditing. The joint stock act of the year, which made possible the separation of management and ownership of joint stock companies, created a new dimension in the requirement for periodic financial statement as shareholder and other investment. With the advert of colonial rule in Africa, the European system of accounting was introduced in West African countries such as Nigeria, Ghana, Gambia and so on.
The primary purpose of accounting is for stewardship. It should be largely correct them to say that the earliest form of accounting records revealed the preoccupation with internal control.
According to Osita Aguola (1998:36). An internal control is the whole system of controls, financial or otherwise established by management, in order to secure, as far as possible the accuracy and reliability of the records in the business in an orderly manner and safeguard the company’s asset, it’s objective being the prevention or early detection of fraud and error.
Accounting can be taken as the set of rules and method by which financial and economic data as collected processed and summarized into reports that can be used in making decision. Management accounting which is another accounting system is different from financial accounting which get it impetus form the industrial revolution. It is the application of accounting and statistical technique. For the specific purpose of providing and interpreting cost information designed to assist management in its function in promoting maximum efficiency. The most recent accounting method is social welfare or responsibility accounting and owes it’s birth to the social revolution which has been under way in the Western world in the last few years. It created social awareness that people started becoming interested in not just the amount of profit made but also on how the numerous social problems could be solved. Accounting records from the bedrock of management decision and continuity of the business concerned. The need for the establishment of internal control mechanism is necessarily to ensure the safety and ethnicity of accounting records from the points of collection of cash or material for final uses.
Internal control therefore means the whole system of controls financial and otherwise established by the management in order to carry on the efficient manner, ensure adherence to management policies, safeguard it’s assets and secure as far as possible the accuracy and reliability of it’s records.
TABLE OF CONTENT
Title pageii
Approval pageiii
Dedicationiv
Acknowledgementv
Prefacevi
Table of contentvii
CHAPTER ONE
Introduction1
1.1Background of the study1
1.2Statement of the study4
1.3.Purpose of the study5
1.4.Significance of the study6
1.5Scope of the study7
1.6Definition of terms8
CHAPTER TWO
Review of related literature10
2.1Principles of financial internal control system13
2.2Sources of data18
CHAPTER THREE
Summary of findings, recommendation 19
and conclusion
3.1Summary of findings19
3.2Summary of recommendation20
3.3Conclusion 21
Bibliography23