Question
The Youth Support Centre is a small charitable organisation. It has only four full-time employees: two staff (Henry and Samantha), an accountant (Mary), and an
The Youth Support Centre is a small charitable organisation. It has only four full-time employees: two staff (Henry and Samantha), an accountant (Mary), and an office manager (Joseph). The majority of its funding comes from two campaign drives, one in the summer and one in winter. Donors make donations over the telephone. Some donors pay their donation by credit card during the telephone campaign, but many prefer to pay in monthly instalments by cheque. In such cases, the donor donations are recorded during the telephone campaign and they are then mailed donation cards. Donors mail their contributions directly to the charity. Most donors send a cheque, but occasionally some send cash. Most donors return their donation card with their cheque or cash donation, but occasionally the Youth Support Centre receives anonymous cash donations. The procedures used to process donations are as follows: Henry, one of the staff members who has worked for the Youth Support Centre for 12 years, opens all mail. He sorts the donations from the other mail and prepares a list of all donations, indicating the name of the donor (or anonymous), amount of the donation, and the donation number (if the donor returned the donation card). Henry then sends the list, cash, and cheques to Mary, the accountant. Mary, the accountant enters the information from the list into the computer to update the Youth Support Centres files. Mary then prepares a deposit slip (in duplicate) and deposits all cash and cheques into the charitys bank account at the end of each day. No funds are left on the premises overnight. The validated deposit slip is then filed by date. Mary also mails an acknowledgment letter thanking each donor. Monthly, Mary retrieves all deposit slips and uses them to reconcile the Youth Support Centres bank statement. At this time, Mary also reviews the donation files and sends a follow-up letter to those people who have not yet fulfilled their donations. Each employee has a computer workstation that is connected to the internal network. Employees are permitted to surf the web during lunch hours. Each employee has full access to the charitys accounting system, so that anyone can fill in for someone else who is sick or on holiday. Each Friday, Mary makes a backup copy of all computer files. The backup copy is stored in Joseph, the office managers office.
(a) Based on the preceding information draw the context diagram for Youth Support Centre.
(b) Describe three (3) internal control weaknesses in the above process.
(c) For each of the internal control weaknesses identified in part (b), describe how the system can be redesigned to reduce the scope for fraud and other opportunistic behaviours.
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