Control Self-Assessments: The Future Of Store Audits In Retail Stores
•White Paper: Control Self-Assessments: The Future Of Store Audits In Retail Stores
According to the 2003 National Retail Security Survey, produced by Richard Hollinger at the University of Florida, retailers in the United States lost approximately $33.6 billion as a result of inventory shrinkage. Additionally, in the wake of recent government regulations, particularly the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, the emphasis on internal controls compliance and documentation is here to stay. An increased attention to governance, compliance and risk management has led many retailers to implement a store compliance process in order to properly monitor the identification of issues and resulting remediation.
A store self-audit, also known as control self-assessment (CSA), is a cost-effective and efficient alternative for organizations to expand their store audit coverage and improve their ability to meet business objectives. Wider coverage leads to increased availability of valuable information for executive management's use in managing and monitoring operational aspects of their business. Additionally, the self-audit program raises accountability by engaging store managers, who are the direct control owners, and places overall responsibility of the controls in their hands. Store self-assessment alone does not create a complete or effective store-level audit program and should not be the only auditing effort. However, coupled with formal validation of the self-assessment results, development of remediation plans and timely follow-up on issues identified during the self-assessment, store self-audits can be the most cost-effective method of monitoring all stores on a regular basis.
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