Understand the Need for Internal Audits for your business.

Internal Audits help you keep a consistency in the flow of work towards strategy plan to achieve corporate objectives. It helps in identification of gaps in policies and ensures organizational procedures are being followed. Its basic goal is to ensure effectiveness and efficiency of operations, reliability of financial reporting, and compliance with laws and regulations in an independent and objective manner to manage performance and product quality; it can be done with internal resources or can be outsourced to an external auditing vendor. Smaller businesses may require these functions even more than large businesses. A small business simply cannot afford employee fraud, waste, or a government fine. Establishing an Internal Audit function provides a vital step in the growth of a small business.

1. Frauds and Embezzlement: An on-going internal auditing of financial transactions may prohibit employee from misusing the company resources. Businesses loose sizable amount of money every year because of employee theft which may include misleading customers in payments, cheque tampering, improper transactions. Even with a small staff, a small business may create a program for monitoring employees and their behaviour.

2. Monitoring Internal Controls:  To reduce exposure to frauds and other losses the policies and procedures should be examined on a regular basis. If credits are extended towards the customers it helps in reducing frauds, though the policies should be made such that it compliances with it. Formal audits should be assigned for such tasks as part time audits conducted by a person assigned with other duties may not be able to detect frauds.

3. Operational Audit: A growing business needs to monitor compliance with human resource laws whenever new employees join the company. Internal audit performs a vital service in reviewing these functions. The operational Audits examine the practices of a business than the finances. Ineffective operations lead to increased overhead and lesser profits. An Audit helps in identification of such ineffective operations and reduced the cost.

Some of the Benefits if you perform regular Internal Audits are: 

•  It Improves the control environment of the business
•  It makes the business more process oriented than person oriented.
•  Identifies inefficient operational and control procedures and provides recommendations to improve those.
•  Serves as an Early Warning System prior to external audits.
•  As a whole it increases the accountability within the business.

Time Period: 

It can be time consuming job which would require some additional resources and is done in different intervals of time which can be daily, weekly, monthly or annually it is an independent, objective assurance and consulting activity designed to add value and improve an organization's operations.

If you think you cannot afford an internal audit department, you can carefully plan by your own and create a system for identification of gaps in your business and the employees by setting up a small informal team who could audit your business or simply outsource to an Auditing vendor.

At Gapeseed Consulting our team members have specialized in carrying out the internal-management, forensic, informative system audits of small to medium sized business entities. Check
out our Auditing services, you can drop us a line here or feel free to send in an email to info@gapeseedconsulting.com.

UNDERSTANDING THE BASICS OF FRRO IN INDIA

The one place every long term outsider has to visit is the FRRO within 14days of their stay, probably it’s too early to ask an outsider even before they settle down but they must do it. This article will tell you about the FRRO and the importance of it.

The FRRO stands for Foreigners Regional Registration Office which handles all the services required by foreigners living in India.

Now the point is who does and doesn’t have to register. It depends on your visa, if it is written on it that you have to register then you must otherwise there are categories like people holding a visa of more than 180 days like in the case of an employee, someone on a project or medical visa you must register regardless of how long is you stay, your visa must be of at least 180 days. Whereas Foreign Diplomats and OCI cardholders need not. Tourist visas are not valid for a single visit of more than 180 days, and therefore do not need to register either.

Failing to register can have grave consequences it might land you in Jail for 5 years or a fine of up to Rs.10,000. Children below the age of 16 do not required to be register, however you must take them along just in case if they need to sign any documents.

The FRRO is quiet stringent about the registration if you lie in the category of foreigner who must register then it is a must to register within 14 days else you could register yourself before you leave or your visa is extended i.e., around 150days.

FRROs are located in most of the major cities but incase you don’t have one in the present city you can report to the superintendent of police though it is advisable to go the nearest FRRO.  

Now when it comes to why you really should go to the FRRO is because of the simple reasons like

1.) Residence permits (RP), and registers any change of address

2.) Extensions and conversions of certain kinds of visas

3.) Exit visas grants. 

There are few things you need to be aware of as cautions while you stay in India

CAUTION 

The Indian Wildlife (Protection) Act bans all forms of wildlife trade. Violations of the provisions of the Act are punishable with heavy fines and imprisonment. Foreigners are therefore, advised not to buy any wildlife or wildlife products or derivatives, specially ivory articles, fur and skin articles derived from wild animals such as Shahtoosh.  

BEWARE 

Foreigners should not carry, buy, sell or use psychotropic drugs or any other narcotic substances while in India as their purchase, sale or possession is a cognisable offence. 

The FRRO can be a place of lot of difficulties but at the same time it can be very pleasant if you follow certain rules like showing up early, carrying extra copies which are signed and attested and most important of all being friendly and patient.

For any further queries we at Gapeseed Consulting would be glad to help you, just drop us an email at info@gapeseedconsulting.com.

Accounting Technology Trends 2016

Business owners are always looking for customers who buy their stuff and they continuously strive for customer satisfaction. And the same theory prevails when we enter the world of accounting software. What accounting software companies want is to sell products or services that make their customer’s life convenient. In 2016, this trend will continue.

The evolution of accounting technology toward Software as a Serviceis ushering in a new era of delivery and storage of client information. The systems are all designed to make customer’s life easier while keeping them closer to software companies.The systems will provide accounting firms, as well as other businesses, the flexibility of location, access device while eliminating much of the technology maintenance responsibility off from the company’s shoulders.This year looks like it could be the year when accounting will finally get things in the fast gear! But before that let’s have a look on the latest trends in accounting technology that are likely to catch up in 2016.

Trend #1 Cloud Based Solutions Are Rising High

2016 is going to be the year that accounting starts to ascend pretty high, into the cloud. The trend includes using intelligence data to make informed business decisions. Software companies are looking to collect actionable information in order to drive business growth and provide their customerswith information that will enhance the company’s value.They are alsomaking drastic moves to get more and more people into the cloud. Putting information in the cloud makes business sense as an accountant can access the customer’s files more easily, saving both the parties time. In turn, the customers can also access their own accounts from anywhere, making it easier to enter expenses and revenue on-the-go.

Trend #2 Get Introduced To App-Solute Delight

We live in a world where applications in smartphones play a major role in making life easier for us. So why it be any different when it comes to accounting activities?Sales, purchases, and other accounting records can be entered into SaaS based accounting apps like Sage One or QuickBooks online and then sent as a packaged file to an accountant for further processing for taxes. Accounting technology tends to be the core of the application suites in the market today, from small to medium sized businesses using QuickBooks tools, to larger businesses using solutions like SAP and NetSuite. All this makes accounting activities easier to perform by any business firm.

Trend #3 Let Your Computer Do All The Reading

Get introduced to one of the many wonders of the accounting world - the optical character recognition or the OCR. Thanks to this technology which can put your scanner for better use besides photocopying. What’s its exact use? Well, it turns images into readable and editable text. That means one can take a picture of his whiteboard after a meeting or discussion and he can get a ready document with all the handwritten notes typed instantly. It basically eliminates the process of hand-entered receipt for accountants thus saving a lot of their time. The technology is already makingnews, but there’s plenty of room for process improvement.

These are few trends that we are going to witness this year. At Gapeseed Consulting we follow the latest trends and have solutions to all your accounting requirements. If you have found this post fruitful or you want to add something to it, feel free to write to us on, info@gapeseedconsulting.com or you can also call us at +91-9599444630.