Separating employee duties in a business is essential to help safeguard your assets, among many other beneficial components. Separation of duties can help you place internal controls over your company’s assets. Separation of duties can help you practice bookkeeping more efficiently and effectively as it prohibits the allocation of responsibilities to one person.
Application in General Business and Accounting
In general business and accounting, the segregation of duties serves two essential purposes. These purposes include an assurance that you can review and catch errors easily if there is an oversight, and it also prevents theft and fraud. Separation of duties is an essential phenomenon as it involves the separation of three main functions:
1. Custody of assets 2. Authorized use of assets 3. Keeping records of assets. Although separation of duties is difficult to achieve in small businesses, it should be implemented as much as possible to improve the performance of the employees in the organization.
Application in Information Systems
Business owners never want fraud to occur in their company. However, it can happen when a single person handles more than one step of the transaction style. It often happens in small businesses as there aren’t many employees. That is why setting clear roles and responsibilities for each job is essential. It gives employees a thorough list of the tasks they are expected to do when performing them and reviews their work.
It plays a pivotal role in employee accountability. Without various levels of accountability, even the best organizations can be rendered meaningless. Separating employees’ duties enhances work performance. Business owners should separate each employee’s duties to improve their skills and deter the staff from committing fraud.
Employee Accountability
When this process is implemented, the credibility of accurate financial reporting is vastly increased. It reduces the risk of fraud as it assures the creation of a culture of accountability. It protects the business from any unnecessary or unplanned loss. Separation of duties can increase efficiency toward an organization’s aims and objectives.
It assures that your employees are not burdened with huge workloads and that you provide a stress-free environment. Involving multiple employees in a single task can prevent any potential error. Involving more than one person in the transaction cycle can prevent one from gaining complete control over a single process. Therefore, the opportunity for fraudulent behavior is reduced.
Business Operations
The business operations are severely impaired if you do not have a separation of duties. As a business owner, you should delegate work in everyday business operations and not do it yourself. Attempting to do it all without help or delegation will result in burnout, chaos, and business failure.
It is very common for business owners to be hesitant to give up tasks. The business is often an accumulation of their life’s work. Owners must hire good staff and be willing to delegate work to them. They must hire as much staff as needed to divide the tasks and ensure they are fully realized daily, weekly, or monthly.
Conclusion
There are many reasons for separating duties within a company. This separation begins with recognizing that there are tasks that owners should not be taking on themselves, such as accounting or other vital duties. Also, if an owner is trying to do everything regarding operations, this can lead to the business’s failure.
Employee accountability is another significant reason to separate duties. Without defined duties or tasks, things can easily fall through the cracks. The separation of duties must be a priority when you have staff.
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