Segregation of duties
In accounting, segregation of duties means splitting authorization, recording, custody of assets and reconciliation across different people, so no one person can both commit and conceal an error or fraud — at minimum, preparer ≠ approver.
- Layer
- Lexicon
- Defined in
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- Components
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Authority
This definition follows Internal control — SOX §404.
Every citation in this system, with the text we read and the date we checked it, is in US GAAP and where these rules come from.
The lesson that teaches this
Accounting, 0 to 1 — a free course taught end to end on one month of one company, with the spreadsheet exercises to work it yourself.
Segregation of duties, in use
Quoted from the 3 documents that use the word — what it does to an interface, in the spec's own sentence.
Approval, segregation of duties, and duplicate detection are the reason these forms exist.
Approval, segregation of duties, and duplicate detection are not features bolted onto a form — they are the reason the form exists.
Exit gate: segregation of duties cannot be bypassed by any path in the UI, and a vendor bank-detail change before a payment run is impossible to miss.
For founders
The same idea written for a founder: what it costs a startup that ignores it, and what to do in a real month.
What it is not called
Each of these is a real word for a different thing. Using it here is what makes a product read as though it was built by someone who has not done the work.
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Components that render this
The concept is not documentation-only. These are the components that name it in their specification, grouped and stated exactly as the catalog states them.
Components that render the terms it depends on
Little in the catalog names this concept outright, but its definition is built out of others that are named. These render reconciliation.
1Primitives
Family spec5Ledger & tables
Family spec6Statements
Family spec10Receivables (AR)
Family spec13Metrics & analysis
Family specNearby in the catalog
Components in this part of the system that no term names outright. A weaker claim than the list above, and stated as one — but a component nothing links to is a component nobody finds.
Terms this one depends on
Also in Controls
Work with this concept
The calculators that compute it and the ledger payloads that carry it. A definition is where a reader starts; these are where they go next.
Defined in Lexicon. This page is generated from that document, so the two cannot disagree.