Internal Controls for Small and Mid-Size Businesses (Accountant version)

Elevate your ability to assess, advise on, and implement internal controls in the small and mid-size business environments where the stakes are high and resources are lean. This webinar moves beyond theory to address the practical realities accountants face when evaluating control environments that don't have the luxury of deep staffing, dedicated compliance teams, or enterprise-level systems. Learn to identify the gaps that matter most, communicate risk effectively to leadership, and recommend controls that are both rigorous and right-sized.

Shana Cooper, CPA and founder of The AccountAbility Team, LLC, draws on decades of accounting leadership experience — including roles in public accounting, corporate controllership, and consulting engagements — to lead this session. Through real-world scenarios and practical, experience-based discussion, she addresses the control challenges that accountants encounter most often in smaller organizations and offers a practical lens for evaluating and strengthening those environments. Cooper helps attendees sharpen their professional judgment around control design, segregation of duties constraints, and the art of making meaningful recommendations that clients and leadership teams will actually implement.

Key topics covered include:

• Internal control frameworks applied to the realities of small and mid-size organizations

• The most common — and most costly — control gaps in lean environments

• Core control types — prevention, detection, and correction — and how to apply them effectively

• Working within real-world staffing limitations when designing for segregation of duties

• Practical approaches to evaluating and prioritizing control improvements

Learning Objectives

1. Apply internal control concepts to assess the effectiveness of control environments in small and mid-size organizations

2. Identify high-risk control gaps and develop prioritized recommendations for improvement

3. Design and communicate scalable control solutions that account for staffing and operational constraints

Business Benefits:

• Stronger ability to protect client and employer organizations from fraud, error, and compliance exposure

• Greater confidence in the reliability of financial reporting produced in lean-team environments

• Improved capacity to advise leadership on control investments that align with organizational risk tolerance

• Enhanced credibility as a trusted advisor on risk, process, and financial integrity

• Practical frameworks that translate directly into client engagements, internal assessments, and team training

This webinar is a practical, applied session for accounting professionals who regularly work with — or within — small and mid-size businesses and want to sharpen their ability to evaluate control environments and drive meaningful improvements. Attendees will leave with stronger professional judgment, clearer frameworks for assessing risk, and concrete strategies they can apply immediately in their work.

Presenter

Shana Cooper, CPA
Founding Director
The AccountAbility Team, LLC
shana.cooper@theaccountabilityteam.com
719.660.6445
www.theaccountabilityteam.com