Why should the person who keeps the records of an asset not be the person responsible for its custody?

What is Separation of Duties?

The separation of duties concept prohibits the assignment of responsibility to one person for the acquisition of assets, their custody, and the related record keeping. For example, one person can place an order to buy an asset, but a different person must record the transaction in the accounting records. By separating duties, it is much more difficult to commit fraud, since at least two people must work together to do so - which is far less likely than if one person is responsible for all aspects of an accounting transaction.

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What is Separation of Duties?
Examples of the Separation of Duties
Separation of Duties for Cash
Separation of Duties for Accounts Receivable
Separation of Duties for Inventory
Separation of Duties for Payroll
Problems with the Separation of Duties
Terms Similar to the Separation of Duties
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Why should the person who keeps the records of an asset not be the person responsible for its custody What are the limitations of internal control?
Why should the responsibility for maintaining the accounting records be separated from the responsibility for operations?
What accounting duties should be segregated?
What are some examples of segregation of duties?

Examples of the Separation of Duties

Examples of the separation of duties are noted below for a variety of functional areas.

Separation of Duties for Cash

One person opens envelopes containing checks, and another person records the checks in the accounting system. This reduces the risk that checks will be removed from the company and deposited into a person's own checking account.

Separation of Duties for Accounts Receivable

One person records cash received from customers, and another person creates credit memos to customers. This reduces the risk that an employee will divert an incoming payment from a customer and cover the theft with a matching credit to that customer's account.

Separation of Duties for Inventory

One person orders goods from suppliers, and another person logs in the received goods in the accounting system. This keeps the purchasing person from diverting incoming goods for his own use.

Separation of Duties for Payroll

One person compiles the gross pay and net pay information for a payroll, and another person verifies the calculations. This keeps a payroll clerk from artificially increasing the compensation of some employees, or from creating and paying fake employees.

Problems with the Separation of Duties

A problem with the separation of duties is that it is much less efficient and more time-consuming than having a single person be responsible for all aspects of a transaction. Thus, you should examine the tradeoff between increasing the level of control and reducing the amount of efficiency when deciding whether to implement the separation of duties in some areas. It is quite possible that the improvement in control is not sufficient to offset the reduced level of efficiency.

A misconception about the separation of duties is that it reduces the amount of accounting errors. This only happens if there is duplicate data entry, or if multiple people verify each others' work. This is not the goal of the separation of duties concept, which is targeted at giving certain tasks to one person, and other tasks to another person - the concept is not designed for the duplication of tasks, so accounting errors are not likely to be reduced.

Terms Similar to the Separation of Duties

The separation of duties is also known as the segregation of duties.

This depends on the size of a company because if the owners are resposible for the custody of an asset this doesn't matter so much. It also depends on the type of asset you are talking about. If an asset is not something easily convertable to cash this also does not matter much.

In most cases, the person who keeps financial records for a company should not also be the one who has access to the asset. The reason for this is that if they do, it can be quite easy for them to steal from the company and cover it up by changing the financial records.