Carefully study the scenario below and highlight all internal control strengths and weaknesses.Discuss how all internal control weaknesses can be addressed.

Sam Simpson is the accountant of a medium size company.Every weekday, his first task is to check whether any suppliers have transmitted their invoice electrically to him.If there is an invoice, Sam then checks for a corresponding purchase order.If he locates the purchase order, he then contacts the receiving department and checks whether the goods have arrived.If the goods have arrived, Sam then prepares a cheque and forwards to the supplier.

If Sam cannot locate the purchase order, he places the invoice in the 'pending invoice' tray until he receives a reminder notice from the supplier.He then checks whether he had received the purchase order and repeats the process above of checking with the receiving department and then forwarding the cheque on to the supplier if the purchase order was found and the goods were received.

In the unlikely case that Sam cannot locate the purchase order after receiving the reminder notice from the supplier, he calls the purchasing department and requests another copy of the purchase order.