During the last 5 years, I have been involved with ongoing discussions with organizations regarding the best method to track and monitor the huge amount of Sarbanes Oxley key controls, test results, gap remediation, and overall reporting. Read more »

In January 2009, COSO published “Monitoring Guidance” to help organizations better monitor the effectiveness of their internal control system, and take corrective action if needed. This has direct implications for ongoing SOX work, so I thought it would be useful to highlight some of the more salient points. Read more »

The Accounts Payable process needs to be very carefully controlled. Read more »

10 Steps to SOX Efficiency

The Institute of Internal Auditor Magazine (October 2008), has an excellent article written by Norman Marks, CPA, VP Governance at Business Objects (an SAP company). It contains practical information about what questions companies should be asking, and reviews that they should be doing to ensure that their SOX processes are as efficient and effective as possible. Read more »

On October 24, 2008 the OSC released the long awaited revisions to National Instrument 52-109. This is a follow up to the announcement on April 28, 2008 that various aspects were under revision and public comment was welcomed. Well, the final program for Canadian “SOX” is now in place, and as expected, the effective date for full implementation is December 15, 2008 – no extensions. Read more »

Organizations can often benefit from the additional resources, expertise and independence provided by external consultants, such as Gary Schein of GFS Consulting. Gary has been involved with SOX process documentation, test designs, testing, and risk assessments with publicly traded companies for over 4 years. In addition, Gary is a member of the Institute of Internal Auditors, and has over 25 years of financial management, accounting and internal audit experience with public, private and non-profit organizations.

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