Accounting practices of religious organization : the case of mosques in Kuala Terengganu

Abstract

Mismanagement of funds in religious organizations especially in Western church organization has becoming more common. Such scandals had affected the credibility of religious organizations where it always being seen as ‘sacred’ organizations and people working there are considered to have high moral values. This scandal happens due to poor accounting practices and internal control in the religious organizations (Abdul Rahman and Goddard, 1998; Bowrin, 2004 and Sulaiman et al, 2008). Since the nature of Islamic religious organizations is comparable to church organizations, it is not surprising to note that mismanagement of funds also happens in the Islamic religious organizations. This study is aim to examine the accounting practices in one of the Islamic religious organizations which is mosques by focusing on qaryah mosques in Kuala Terengganu. Mixed methods (quantitative and qualitative) of data collection were used in this study. The questionnaire was disseminated to seventy-six qaryah mosques in Kuala Terengganu but only thirty-nine responded. This study found that qaryah mosques in Kuala Terengganu have implemented strong control over internal control on receipt of income and satisfactory control over financial accounting and reporting. Nevertheless, they have weak control for disbursement of income and budgetary practices. This study also performed regression analysis to test the association between internal control in the receipt and disbursement of income with the qualification of the treasurer, location of the mosque and Friday collection. The analysis only showed a significant relationship between internal controls for receipt of income with location of the mosque. Overall, it appears that qaryah mosques in Kuala Terengganu do implement accounting and internal control procedures. However, what is clearly lacking is the segregation of duties. Hence, the accounting practice and control in qaryah mosques need to be improved so that the risk of embezzlement could be reduced.