Advisory
Every organization carries risk. The useful question is which risks are large, likely, and currently unguarded.
Goldenthal & Suss Consulting P.C. performs financial and compliance risk assessments for businesses, nonprofits, and government entities. A risk assessment identifies where an organization is most exposed — to fraud, misstatement, grant or contract noncompliance, cash shortfalls, or key-person dependence — ranks those risks by likelihood and impact, and recommends proportionate controls. It draws on the same risk-based methods an auditor uses, applied for management's benefit rather than for an audit opinion.
The assessment starts with how money comes in and goes out: who can initiate a payment, who approves it, who reconciles the account, and whether any one person can do all three. It then widens to reporting risk — estimates, revenue recognition, restricted funds — and to compliance obligations from lenders, funders, grant agreements, and regulators.
For closely held businesses, key-person dependence is often the largest unrecognized risk: one bookkeeper or controller who holds every password and every process in their head.
Not every risk needs a control. Some are accepted, some are insured, some are monitored. The assessment ranks each risk so that limited time and money go to the few that matter most, and so the owner or board can see the decision being made rather than discovering it after a loss.
A risk assessment asks where the organization is exposed and how much each exposure matters. An internal control assessment asks whether the controls over specific processes are designed and operating well. They are complementary: the risk assessment tells you which controls deserve scrutiny first.
Small organizations are often more exposed, not less, because limited staff makes segregation of duties hard and a single loss is proportionally larger. The assessment is scaled to the organization — for a small entity it may be a few interviews and a short, prioritized report.
No. A fraud risk assessment is preventive: it identifies where fraud could occur and go undetected, so controls can be placed there. If an actual fraud is suspected, that calls for a different, investigative engagement.
Tell us about your organization and the deadline you are working toward. We will tell you what the engagement involves and what it costs.
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