The Internal Control Environment of the Company - Assignment Example

Current economic environment. Due to the global turmoil and recession, consumers became more conservative in their spending behavior. With this in mind, they purchased less and chose to buy less expensive sets of goods leading to low sales by the company. Global fuel prices. Safeway has its own gas stations. The rapid increase and abrupt changes in fuel prices per gallon have greatly affected the revenue of Safeway Company. Fuel sales increased by $1408.7 million. Stores. Safeway has stores all over the United States, Canada, and Mexico among others.

According to Safeway’s financial report of 2011, the management declared that most of its stores are more than 47000 square feet with considerations of their site. Although they rent out certain premises, Safeway also has its own stores and these are crucial in its operations. Safeway has the policy of segregation of duties. This is where one employee or department is not given the task of running a transaction from the beginning to the end without being checked by another person. This reduces the risk of errors and intentional manipulation of information.

This is possible since a specific task goes through various employees and departments and in each stage the details are counterchecked by someone different. The management of Safeway ensures that the company assets are safe and only authorized personnel can access them for company use. There is also the use of documentation of projects to ensure their movement is tracked. In this technological age, the use of closed-circuit cameras is also used to monitor the movement of people in and out of where documents are put under lock and key.

Human beings are also stationed in strategic places as guards to protect against the unauthorized entrance to protected areas. Within the accounting function at Safeway, the management has put in place measures to ensure that transactions are authorized and accurately recorded.