EVALUATION OF PRIORITY OBJECTIVES AND THE FUNCTIONING OF INTERNAL CONTROL IN COMPANIES OF SUMADIJA AND RASKA DISTRICTS

Biljana Jovkovic

Faculty of Economics, University of Kragujevac, Kragujevac, The Republic of Serbia

Without the existence of a internal control system in today’s conditions of business operations, managing a company would be unthinkable. The presence of control allows the performance of business activities according to a plan through the preventive suppression of the deviant phenomena that could jeopardize the realization of defined objectives. If the system were not established, the company would potentially be exposed to significant losses, whose final result could be the failure and disappearance of the company. This paper is aimed at indicating the ranking and significance of the individual objectives of the internal control system in our companies’ business operations practice and, in this regard, the need for the establishment of appropriate control activities as an additional measure for securing the achievement of the proclaimed business objectives of the company. The research has shown that the best-ranked objective of internal control is the improvement of the accuracy and reliability of bookkeeping and operational data, which indicates that companies see regulators’ external responsibility as a priority in their business operations. The lowest-ranked objective - the evaluation of business efficiency, speaks in favor of the secondary position of the needs of internal informing in relation to external report demands. In the paper, an attempt was made to comprehensively analyze the way in which internal control is implemented in a company’s most important functions, namely the functions of sales, supply, production, human resources, and the financial function.

Keywords: activity control, objective internal control objectives, financial reporting, internal control system

JEL Classification: M40, M41, M42