IPA IP 2025 Question 43

The accounting department examines and approves what the salesperson submits — a mutual check between organizations means one department's work is checked by another department as a routine step of the work itself.

In internal control, a check (segregation of duties) stops one person or one department from completing a transaction alone, so that errors and misconduct are caught as the work is done. In (a) the sales department claims the expenses, and a different organization, the accounting department, examines the documents and vouchers and approves them before paying. That happens on every claim, every day: a mutual check between organizations built into the procedure.

Answer (a)

Why not others:

• •(b) — the only check is the superior's approval inside the sales department; accounting pays because it was approved, without examining anything itself, so no other organization checks the claim
• •(c) — the advance application and approval stay inside the sales department, and the travel agency only makes bookings; no organization checks the travel expenses
• •(d) — an auditor sampling a year's documents afterwards is an audit (monitoring), done after the fact, not a check carried out in daily operations

Key rule: A mutual check between organizations is built into everyday processing (one department claims, another examines and approves); an audit that samples records later is monitoring, not a daily check.

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