Evaluation of Internal Control Structure. The administration of the County is responsible for establishing and maintaining an internal control structure. The objectives of an internal control structure are to provide management with reasonable, but not absolute, assurance that assets are safeguarded against loss from unauthorized use or disposition and that, transactions are executed in accordance with management's authorizations and recorded properly to permit the preparation of basic financial statements in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles. In planning and performing our audit we will consider the internal control structure in order to determine our auditing procedures for the purpose of expressing our opinion on the County’s basic financial statements and not to provide assurance on the internal control structure. We will obtain an understanding of the design of the relevant policies and procedures for the significant areas of the audit and whether they have been placed in operation, and we will assess control risk. Tests of controls may be performed to test the effectiveness of certain policies and procedures which we consider relevant to preventing and detecting errors and irregularities which are material to the basic financial statements and to preventing and detecting misstatements resulting from illegal acts and other noncompliance matters which have a direct and material effect on the basic financial statements. Our tests, if performed, will be less in scope than would be necessary to render an opinion on the internal control structure policies and procedures and, accordingly, no opinion will be expressed. We will inform the County of any matters involving internal control structure and its operations which we consider to be significant deficiencies under standards established by the AICPA. A significant deficiency is a control deficiency, or combination of control deficiencies, that adversely affects the entity’s ability to initiate, authorize, record, process, or report financial data reliably in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles such that there is more than a remote likelihood that a misstatement of the entity’s financial statements that is more than inconsequential will not be prevented or detected by the entity’s internal control. Compliance with laws, regulations, contracts and grant agreements applicable to the County is the responsibility of management. As part of obtaining reasonable assurance about whether the basic financial statements are free of material misstatement, we will perform tests of the County's compliance with certain provisions of laws, regulations, contracts and grants. However, the objective of our audit will not be to provide an opinion on overall compliance with such provisions, and we will not express such an opinion.
Appears in 2 contracts