Dubinina M. V., Doctor of Sciences in Economics, Professor, Head of Department of Accounting and Taxation, Mykolayiv National Agrarian University, Mykolayiv, Ukraine

ORCID: 0000-0002-3993-0622
e-mail: dubinina@mnau.edu.ua

Accounting Policy as an Instrument for Enhancing the Effectiveness of Control over Goods Transactions

Abstract. Introduction. Goods operations constitute one of the most risk-sensitive areas of accounting in trade enterprises because inventory data directly shape cost of sales, gross profit, and the reliability of internal reporting. The effectiveness of internal control in this area depends on how the accounting policy combines methodological decisions with organizational regulations, including document flow design, authorization rules, allocation of responsibilities, and the creation of an auditable evidence trail. A well-structured policy reduces inconsistencies between primary documents and registers and improves the integrity of information used for managerial decision-making.

Purpose. The purpose of the study is to substantiate the methodological and organizational provisions of accounting policy that enhance the effectiveness of control over goods operations in a trade enterprise and to define practical guidelines for ensuring controllability of inventory movement and related transactions.

Results. The study shows that control effectiveness is driven by the capacity of procedures to prevent errors before they are recorded in accounting registers and to ensure timely correction while maintaining full traceability of data. Control is substantiated across the stages of the goods cycle, including receipt, storage, internal transfers, sale, returns, markdowns, and write-offs, with attention to the specific risks typical for each stage. The paper emphasizes the need to combine preventive and detective controls, for example through regulated authorization, standardized documentation, reconciliations between operational and accounting data, and periodic verification procedures.

A key contribution is the use of data-quality criteria as control benchmarks, ensuring that management information is complete, accurate, timely, comparable over time, and verifiable from the source. The accounting policy should explicitly formalize the rules for generating management indicators related to goods turnover and sales processes, thereby strengthening consistency between financial accounting and internal analytics. To operationalize control responsibilities, a matrix approach is justified for structuring the linkage between risks, accounting policy rules, control actions, and responsible parties. This approach improves governance clarity, supports consistent control execution, and provides a transparent basis for evaluating control results and identifying weaknesses in the control environment.

Conclusions. Accounting policy is presented as an instrument that ensures manageability and auditability of goods operations across the full goods cycle, establishes unified rules for data generation, and defines the boundaries of acceptable accounting decisions. Higher control effectiveness is achieved by integrating preventive and detective procedures into key inventory-flow processes and by ensuring disciplined document flow and terminological clarity regarding sales and sales-process costs. As a result, enterprises can strengthen register consistency, reduce the likelihood of material misstatements related to inventories, and improve the usability of accounting information for management.

Keywords: accounting; control; goods; enterprise management system; accounting policy; goods transactions; internal control.

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