Comptroller
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A comptroller is an official who supervises expenditures. Comptrollers include both royal-household officials and public comptrollers who audit government accounts and sometimes certify expenditures. A well-known comptroller in the United States is that of the government office of the Comptroller of the Currency.
A comptroller is also a controller, one of the chief financial officers in a corporation charged with managing the cash flows of the organization. As a general rule, a comptroller is a public/government official, while a controller is an accounting professional in a company in the private sector.
In the U.S. government, the Comptroller General is the director of the Government Accountability Office (GAO), an agency founded in 1921 to ensure the accountability of the federal government.
The title of comptroller is also used in British Politics - the Comptroller of the Household is a senior Whip, a senior member of the Royal Household, though his duties in this regard are purely nominal. The Comptroller of the Lord Chamberlain's Office, however, is a full-time member of the Royal Household. His duties are concerned with the arrangement of ceremonial affairs rather than financial affairs.
The term comptroller (with French etymology) is often seen as an archaic term, but it is still a relatively common spelling of the job description. In the UK it is generally pronounced with a silent p while the U.S. it is common to pronounce the p.
In the Bailiwick of Guernsey, Channel Islands, Comptroller is the name for second-most senior Law Officer of the Crown. This corresponds to the office of Deputy Attorney-General in Jersey and other jurisdictions.
