Internal controls are your organization's processes and rules that ensure financial accuracy, prevent risk, boost compliance, and help protect your assets. Managing internal controls can be tedious, especially in high-risk industries like finance, healthcare, manufacturing, and technology.
Internal control software, also known as internal control audit software, does the heavy lifting for you. It helps you manage, update, and track controls in real-time and in one place, streamlining management efforts.
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Key Takeaways
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Table of Contents:
- What to Look for in Internal Control Management Software
- Challenges in Managing Internal Controls
- Internal Control Software Enhances Risk Management and Compliance
- Recommended Internal Control Management Software Solutions
What to Look for in Internal Control Management Software
When selecting internal control software, there are several key features you should look for:
- Risk assessment capabilities: Internal control software should identify and assess risks across your organization and within your internal control processes. The software should also help you determine gaps in your internal controls and guide you in how to close them.
- Workflow automation: By automating your internal control workflows, you improve efficiency and mitigate the risk of human error, especially within multi-tier approvals. For example, workflow automation can send alerts when approval is needed or overdue. Internal control software can also automate tasks within your compliance workflows, saving you time and effort.
- Continuous monitoring: Continuous monitoring helps you keep a close eye on control processes. For example, you can monitor key control processes in real-time, taking immediate action should a control fail.
- Reporting: You'll need both real-time and historical reporting features to identify risks and improve internal control processes over time.
- Audit trails: Comprehensive audit trails capture all internal control activity, simplifying financial audits. Every step you've taken to safeguard your organization is captured inside the software, making it easy for you to show auditing evidence without the heavy lifting.
- Access management: Internal control management software should help you facilitate management through access controls. For example, it can help you restrict sensitive data based on job roles and responsibilities, and help you place parameters around what can be done with that data. Should a user be able to edit the data or simply view it?
Challenges in Managing Internal Controls
Internal controls are essential for safeguarding your organization’s assets, ensuring compliance, and maintaining financial accuracy. Yet managing them effectively is no easy task. Complex processes, human error, and organizational siloes can make internal controls cumbersome and prone to failure. Fortunately, internal control software is designed to overcome these challenges:
- Manual processes and human error: Manual processes, such as documenting, reporting, and monitoring, are time-consuming and prone to human error. Internal control software eliminates manual processes through automation. This reduces human error, standardizes documentation, and provides consistent financial reporting in less time.
- Inconsistent control application: Inconsistent control processes across business units lead to serious compliance risks. Through software, you can standardize controls across departments, locations, and units, reducing inconsistencies and preventing non-compliance.
- Lack of clear ownership: Unclear control ownership increases the risk of oversight and error. Internal control software helps you assign control owners for each task and process while flagging unassigned controls. This boosts accountability and reduces confusion across your organization.
- Organizational siloes: Do different parts of your organization manage internal controls in their own way? If so, this opens you up to compliance risks and duplicative efforts that drain your resources. Internal control management software is a single source of truth, communicating and streamlining processes across all areas of your organization.
- Reactivity over proactivity: Manual processes delay your response time. For example, if an error is identified, you must move reactively to avoid the consequences — if it's not already too late. Internal control software enables you to be proactive, uncovering risks before they become situations requiring immediate remediation.
Internal Control Software Enhances Risk Management and Compliance
To effectively tackle these challenges, internal control software provides powerful tools to streamline operations, strengthen risk management, and ensure regulatory compliance. It achieves this by:
- Automated control monitoring: Automated control monitoring allows you to see processes and activities in real-time, helping you detect unusual activity, potential fraud, and other issues as they happen. Through the help of automation, you can take immediate action based on the parameters set in the software, helping you eliminate risks proactively.
- Real-time data and analytics: Through real-time data, you can spot risks early and take the necessary steps to protect your organization. By identifying risks in the moment, it's easier to adhere to regulations and remain in compliance.
- Transparency and accountability: Internal control software outlines who's responsible for specific controls, ensuring accountability. And through continuous monitoring and real-time reporting, your entire organization has access to your data, improving transparency. This transparency also simplifies the audit process, as everyone can access accurate data at all times.
- Efficient workflow management: Internal control workflows are complex. This complexity increases if workflows differ across departments, locations, and units. Internal control software centralizes and automates workflows, ensuring everyone is following the same procedures. With everyone on the same page, compliance and audit processes are simplified.
- Alerts and notifications: Alerts and notifications ensure you stay aware of what's going on within your internal control processes. Many internal control management solutions will send notifications for a wide variety of situations, such as missed approvals, potential risks, and process failures.
- Scalability: As your organization grows, so will your internal control processes. And as they grow, manual tools, like spreadsheets, become overwhelmingly complex. Software solutions are scalable, enabling you to build additional workflows and processes to fit your organization's needs now and in the future.
Recommended Internal Control Management Software Solutions
There are many internal control management software solutions out there to choose from. While you must select software that fits your specific needs, the following platforms can help you automate monitoring, access real-time insights, collaborate across teams, improve accountability, and scale your internal control management as you grow.
AuditBoard
Rating: 4.6/5 (G2)
AuditBoard is known as the "modern connected risk platform." This platform includes capabilities that help streamline processes involving audits, InfoSec, risk management, and ESG compliance.
As for strengths, AuditBoard improves accountability with comprehensive monitoring and collaboration features. Visual dashboards and ready-to-use reports help you see the status of all internal control programs.
AuditBoard also simplifies collaboration by keeping conversations inside the platform. Features include commenting functionality, custom surveys, and conditional question capabilities. These features keep all stakeholders on the same page and reduce siloed approaches to internal control management.
Sprinto
Rating: 4.8/5 on G2
Sprinto is a modern compliance automation platform built specifically for fast-growing, cloud-native companies. It supports 20+ security and privacy frameworks, including SOC 2, ISO 27001, GDPR, HIPAA, and CMMC 2.0, with the flexibility to layer and manage multiple programs simultaneously.
What sets Sprinto apart is its automation-led approach to compliance. From day one, Sprinto’s experts guide your team through implementation, risk assessment, and audit readiness. The platform continuously monitors controls, captures audit evidence, and surfaces issues in real time—ensuring your compliance state is always up to date.
Sprinto’s integration-first architecture connects with 200+ cloud services, enabling low-touch onboarding and seamless control mapping. With built-in workflows, audit-friendly reporting, and async audit capabilities, Sprinto helps eliminate the manual burden of compliance while accelerating audit success.
Netsuite
Rating: 4.1/5 on G2
NetSuite is a leading cloud ERP platform that integrates financial management with robust internal control capabilities—making it a powerful solution for organizations looking to enforce compliance, streamline audits, and manage risk at scale.
NetSuite’s internal control strengths include automated workflows, role-based access controls, and comprehensive audit trails that document every transaction and change. These features help ensure data integrity, support segregation of duties, and enable organizations to meet internal and external compliance requirements with confidence.
The platform also offers real-time visibility into financial processes through dashboards and customizable reports, making it easier to monitor exception handling, identify anomalies, and drive accountability across departments. NetSuite’s native controls are further enhanced through its SuiteFlow tool, allowing businesses to design, automate, and adapt control workflows without extensive IT support.
Built for scalability, NetSuite allows internal control frameworks to evolve alongside the business—supporting compliance for growth-stage startups and global enterprises alike.
Workiva
Rating: 4.6/5 (G2)
Workiva unites financial reporting, ESG, auditing, and risk processes into one easy-to-use platform. Workiva was built for and excels in compliance for regulated industries, such as banking, energy, government, and higher education.
Workiva features strong reporting and analytics. For financial reporting, numbers and data are updated automatically across the platform, ensuring accuracy. Dashboards showcase data clearly, helping you uncover insights quickly. Workiva also offers built-in audit and risk management tools, such as automatic audit trails and attached evidence.
Through Workiva's seamless integrations, you can connect to data in any other system or spreadsheet and then view and manage it inside the platform, reducing complexity and enabling transparency.
Workday
Rating: 4.1/5 (G2)
Workday unites HR and finance processes into one platform. The platform offers seamless integration with HR and ERP functions, simplifying complex workflows.
Workday offers always-on audit and internal control monitoring, documenting every transaction as it occurs. As a result, you'll have access to updated data at all times, helping you identify risks, report on performance, simplify auditing, and check compliance quickly.
A key strength of Workday is the ability to flex and update your workflows, as needed, without IT support. Workday comes with 850 preconfigured business processes, helping you get started fast and scale even faster.
Diligent
Rating: 4.5/5 on G2
Diligent is a trusted leader in governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) software, offering a powerful AI-enabled Internal Controls Management platform designed to streamline compliance, reduce risk, and strengthen assurance.
Its key advantage lies in AI-driven automation and real-time analytics. Diligent simplifies control testing, issue remediation, and evidence collection through integrated workflows and dashboards powered by ACL Analytics. Teams can detect anomalies, assess risk continuously, and address gaps proactively—improving efficiency without sacrificing control.
The platform connects seamlessly with tools like SAP, Salesforce, and Concur, enabling centralized data management and expanding control coverage across the organization. With FedRAMP authorization, intuitive user tools for control owners, and a unified view of compliance status, Diligent empowers organizations to scale confidently, reduce manual overhead, and equip leadership with real-time insights for better decision-making.
ServiceNow
Rating: 4.4/5 (G2)
ServiceNow offers a cloud-based, AI-focused platform, known as the Now Platform. Through automation, you can easily create highly customizable workflows for all of your internal control processes. This makes ServiceNow perfect for scaling enterprises.
Real-time monitoring is powered by ServiceNow's Workflow Data Fabric. This allows you to connect data across your organization, no matter where it lives, improving visibility.
ServiceNow's Policy and Compliance Management product provides continuous monitoring, approval automation, and control mapping. Through ServiceNow, you can also speed up remediation by using AI to suggest actions based on uncovered issues.
Ensure Compliance Through Proper Internal Control Software Processes
Robust internal controls are essential for protecting your organization and maintaining compliance. To manage those controls effectively, the right internal control management software is key.
8020 Consulting's financial systems consultants can help you select, implement, and optimize the platform that fits your needs. Our team also provides post-go-live support, ensuring your systems operate efficiently and align with your business goals.
