Controlling
Things hardly go exactly as planned, and management should make a concerted effort to the monitor and adjust for their deviations. The managerial accountant is the major facilitator of this control process which includes exploration of the alternative corrective strategies to the remedy unfavourable situations. Additionally, a recent trend which brought about in the USA by the financial legislation most usually known as Sarbanes-Oxley or SOX) is for improved internal controls and mandatory certifications by CEOs and CFOs as to the accuracy of financial reports. These certifications carry penalties of perjury, and have gotten the attention of corporate executives -- leading to greatly extended emphasis on controls of the various internal and external reporting mechanisms.
Mainly large organizations have a person designated as the "controller" or sometimes termed "comptroller". The controller is a significant and respected position within the larger organizations. The corporate control function is of enough complexity that a controller can have hundreds of support personnel to aid with all phases of the management of accounting process. As this person's title suggests, the controller is mainly responsible for the control task; providing leadership for the whole cost and managerial accounting functions. In contrary, the chief financial officer (CFO) is generally responsible for the external reporting, the treasury function, and the general cash flow and financing management. In some of the organizations, one person can serve a dual role as both the CFO and the controller. Larger organizations can also have the separate internal audit group that
reviews the work of an accounting and the treasury units. Because the internal auditors are reporting on effectiveness and the integrity of other units within the business organization, they usually report straight to the highest levels of the corporate leadership. As you can observe, "control" has many dimensions and is the large task!