Tuesday, May 08, 2007

SARBANES-OXLEY ADVICE FOR SMALLER PUBLIC COMPANIES

Up to now, smaller public companies -- usually those with just less than $75 million in public equity -- have not been required to comply with Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. That section requires that a public company's management file a report on its assessment of the company's internal control over financial reporting -- including the financial work that passes through IT. It also requires the company's auditors attest to the quality of the company's internal control over financial reporting in the auditor's annual report.

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) itself has recognized the challenges for smaller companies: smaller companies typically don't have full-time financial controllers; managers in smaller companies have a broad span of control, and this could lead to management override of financial controls; and smaller companies are more dynamic and don't have well-documented processes. Your company may have a lot of work to do to produce a report that makes investors feel confident about your numbers -- even if you are the most honest company.

Labels: Champy, sec, small business

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1 Comments:

: It is always advisable for small companies to take help of third party who can act as consultation and can also help to comply with regulatory compliance in very less time and in more cost effective way without any additional manpower to deploy for this kind of work. A crosswalk between different regulations poster from Symantec is a very useful tool. This poster is crosswalk between: Sarbanes Oxley, HIPAA, Payment Card Industry (PCI), GLBA, NERC standards CIP and PIPEDA (Canada) http://www.compliancehome.com/symantec/; July 09, 2007