Compliance & Technical
What is Internal Controls?
Internal controls are the policies, procedures, and mechanisms an organization uses to ensure the reliability of financial reporting, compliance with regulations, and prevention of fraud and errors.
Explanation
Key accounting internal controls include segregation of duties (no single person controls an entire transaction), authorization requirements (approvals before payment), reconciliation procedures (regular comparison of records), and audit trails (documentation of all actions). Automation strengthens internal controls by enforcing them consistently: an automated three-way match never gets skipped because someone is rushed; an automated approval workflow always requires the right sign-off regardless of who is processing that day. The consistency of automated controls is often stronger than manual controls, which depend on people following procedures under time pressure.
How Rima relates
Rima enforces internal controls through automated validation rules in Blueprints — three-way match, duplicate detection, approval routing — applied consistently to every document.
Learn about compliance automationRelated Terms
Audit Trail
A chronological record that traces every action taken on a document or transaction back to its source.
SOC 2
A security and compliance framework that certifies how a service provider handles customer data.
Three-Way Match
The process of matching a supplier invoice against its purchase order and goods receipt before approving payment.
Audit-Ready
A state in which financial records are complete, traceable, and organized for external or internal audit.
See it in action
Rima automates the manual document workflows accounting teams spend hours on every week.