Guides › Finance & Accounting
Keep a simple risk register your team actually uses
Build a shared risk register with clear ratings, owners and controls, and get a short monthly summary of what's changed.
When to use it
Set up once, review monthly
Step by step
Brainstorm the risks
Describe your department to your AI assistant and use this prompt to get a starting list.
Prompt to copyI manage the [finance department / branch] of a [type and size of organisation]. Our main activities: [list]. Draft a starting risk register as a table: Ref | Risk (cause, event, effect) | Category (financial, operational, people, fraud, compliance, systems) | Likelihood 1-5 | Impact 1-5 | Score | Existing controls | Further action | Owner (role). Include about 15 risks. Use a consistent 1-5 scale and explain the scale in a short key. These are suggestions for me to review, not a final assessment.Make it yours
Go through the list with your team, delete what doesn't apply, add what's missing and set the ratings yourselves. The AI's ratings are just a starting point.
Share it
Save the register in Excel in your team's Teams channel so owners can update their own rows.
Review monthly
Book a recurring monthly review in Outlook Calendar. Before it, paste the register into your AI assistant and ask: 'Compare with last month's version: list new risks, changed scores, overdue actions and the top five by score.'
What you get
R07 | Payments made to a fraudulent supplier bank account after a fake change-of-details email | Fraud | 3 | 5 | 15 | Call-back check on known number | Add second approver for any bank detail change | Finance manager. Top movers this month: R03 key person dependency up from 9 to 16.
Tips
- Write each risk as 'cause, event, effect'; it makes the controls much easier to choose.
- Don't paste client personal data, full account numbers or payroll details into a public AI tool unless your organisation allows it. Use your work-approved assistant if you have one.