Why bother with internal controls? Love your neighbor

One of the key concepts for internal control is called segregation of duties.  The basic concept is to split up financial tasks so that one person cannot do something improper and also hide it.  I will explain this in much more detail on this blog.

Internal controls are usually described from the perspective of the organization, but let’s look at it from the perspective of a staff person.  If your bookkeeper realizes he or she could do something wrong, hide it, and get away with it as a result of missing internal controls, there is constant temptation.  This would eventually be a terrible point of stress, especially on days when that person is weak, under spiritual attack, or facing bad life circumstances.  I would suggest that it is unkind for an organization to burden a staff person day in and day out with temptation of that sort.  Actually, I will go further.  I believe it is irresponsible to put that kind of temptation in the face of a staff person every day and expect that person to resist the temptation every day.  The ministry would show a much higher love of neighbor (in this case, your dedicated bookkeeper) by segregating duties and removing that temptation.

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