Sarbanes-Oxley Compliance Tracker

"On July 30, 2002 The Sarbanes-Oxley Act Was Signed Into Law..."

This act requires positive actions by publicly traded companies to comply with regulations defined. It places stringent accounting demands on CFOs and their staffs. New London's Sarbanes-Oxley Compliance Tracker Version 2.0 is a new Sarbanes-Oxley software application designed specifically to help companies document and audit their organization's operating procedures and efficiently meet these new requirements.

The purpose of Sarbanes-Oxley is to make public companies accountable for their internal business processes and corporate accounting. Sarbanes-Oxley provides regulation for the correctness, completeness and effectiveness of the company internal control processes and business practices.

In many cases the technology organization of a firm provides the systems that run the accounting and financial systems across an enterprise, as well as executing the business processes that support those systems. Entanglement of business processes and technology means that these environments cannot be separated and that the technology organization IT processes, controlling systems (like change management), operations, and monitoring will all be subject to scrutiny and compliance assessment under Sarbanes-Oxley.

What is Sarbanes-Oxley Section 404...

According to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), companies must do the following:

"Include in their annual reports a report of management on the company's internal control over financial reporting."

The control report must include:

• "A statement of management's responsibility for establishing and maintaining adequate internal control over financial reporting."
• "Management's assessment of the effectiveness of the company's internal control over financial reporting."
• "A statement identifying the framework used by management to evaluate the effectiveness of the company's internal control over financial reporting."
• "A statement that the registered public accounting firm that audited the company's financial statements with an attestation report on management's assessment of the company's internal control over financial reporting."
• In addition, Section 302 requires the CEO and CFO to certify quarterly as to the quality and effectiveness of the company’s disclosure controls and procedures.

Creating Value from Sarbanes-Oxley Effort

"As we move into year '2' of Sarbanes-Oxley, company focus will shift to sustainability and maturing of the processes they have implemented."

Having completed Year "1" of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, businesses are having to invest in an equivalent and in most cases higher amount of funding to meet the demands and remediate areas identified during the first year. The New London Sarbanes-Oxley solution creates increased value and return-on-investment (ROI) for organizations with their Sarbanes-Oxley compliance work, such as:

• Centralized repository for managing and tracking Sarbanes-Oxley compliance for entire organization
• Ability to make effort for Sarbanes-Oxley compliance repeatable year-after-year
• Minimizes corporate risk with compliance framework
• Demonstrates control effort to auditors with alignment to all COSO standards and external auditor questions
• Customized to corporate organization and their specific compliance needs and approach
• Standalone, Server Based or Web-Enabled solution for Sarbanes-Oxley Compliance Tracker Application

New London Sarbanes-Oxley Compliance Tracker Application

Sarbanes-Oxley Compliance Tracker is built on the principles contained in the COSO Enterprise Risk Management Framework. Sarbanes-Oxley Compliance Tracker allows users to monitor and control their internal and external audit practices assuring compliance with Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act.

For ease of review by auditors, internal or external, we list 24 Control Points from COSO. Clicking on one of them initiates a sequence that leads down a path illustrating the business processes that supports that function and the specific audit point, as shown below:

The primary objectives of Sarbanes-Oxley Compliance Tracker are:

• Provide templates of key financial processes that facilitate managements' evaluation of internal controls and identify specific audit/control points with identified risks for each financial template/process
• Easily and cost effectively monitor and evaluate the Company's system of risk management
• Provide a step-by-step plan for establishing a risk management control environment and system
• Provide financial templates with audit control points clearly identified and defined
• Provide an educational aid for users to become versed in the control aspects of processes, and the responsibilities assigned to them
• Enable users to access Sarbanes-Oxley Compliance Tracker models from three distinct perspectives
  • Financial processes
  • Job roles and responsibilities
  • Documentation indexes

...and are accessed through six subsystems, as shown:

With New London's Sarbanes-Oxley Compliance Tracker application, companies will have the ability to develop an effective control framework to track and manage their Sarbanes-Oxley compliance and build a repeatable process for ongoing management of the program.

» Please contact New London Associates for more information or to set up a demonstration of Sarbanes-Oxley Compliance Tracker to see how it can address Sarbanes-Oxley compliance needs for your organization...