Final answer:
The question pertains to the separation of duties for good internal control. The billing department is responsible for matching shipping documents with sales orders and preparing daily sales summaries. The correct option for which department should perform these activities is option 1) Billing.
Step-by-step explanation:
To ensure effective internal control within an organization, it's important to have a proper separation of duties to reduce the risk of errors or fraud. The activities of matching shipping documents with sales orders and preparing daily sales summaries are crucial for maintaining accurate sales records and ensuring that the products shipped correspond to the sales orders issued by the company. These tasks involve ensuring that goods are properly billed and that inventory and sales data are accurately recorded.
The billing department is generally responsible for matching shipping documents with sales orders. This process ensures that the products shipped are the ones that were ordered and that the customer is billed correctly. Preparing daily sales summaries also typically falls within the realm of the billing department since these summaries are based on the invoices generated from shipping documents and sales orders. By having the billing department take on these responsibilities, businesses can better maintain the integrity of sales data and protect against potential discrepancies. Therefore, to achieve good internal control over shipping and billing processes, the correct option is the billing department, which is option 1. This selection helps ensure that individuals or departments that authorize sales and handle customer credit do not also have access to the physical assets being shipped, thereby reducing the potential for theft or fraud.