Sarbanes Oxley Section 404 Or Was That Page Not Found 404!

Sarbanes Oxley Section 404 Or Was That Page Not Found 404!
by: Earl Powers


Sarbanes Oxley 404 refers to the section 404 of the Sarbanes Oxley act according to which it entitles to have stricter internal controls while documenting the financial status of the company. Most of the senior executive in the top corporate world emphasize on compliance with Sarbanes Oxley 404 section.

Sarbanes Oxley 404 is directed towards management, members of corporate teams working toward assessment of internal controls over financial reporting and audit committee members. It resolves a number of important issues that pertain to the Sarbanes Oxley 404 compliance of management’s assessment process.

Sarbanes Oxley 404 relates to management’s overall responsibilities, over financial reporting. It gives management to have stringent controls over the total process of assessment and documentation of company’s financial status. Although several help guides and complete illustrations of the Act are available in the market but the management should consult with auditors or professionals like a legal counsel to understand the total compliance with the Sarbanes Oxley 404 section.

Sarbanes Oxley 404 also illustrates information that helps in assistance of audit committee members and company management to understand their individual roles. It also points an overview to the added new responsibilities of the key executives in helping the total process of documentation as per the compliance of Sarbanes Oxley Act.

Sarbanes Oxley 404 also helps audit committee members to understand their broader duties, and to clarify the issues faced by senior executives. After the signing of the Sarbanes Oxley act in 2002 the senior executives are faced with greater potential exposure to personal liability towards the total documentation process of the financial status of the company.

There are several vendors that offer Sarbanes Oxley software which specially deals with particular section of the act. Software offered by OpenPages especially refers to Sarbanes Oxley 404. It allows the company to automate the quarterly test and review of internal controls to lower the costs associated with compliance to the act over each quarter. This software offered by OpenPages has user-specific home pages. It also contain various other features that make is more friendly to use. These features are mainly easy navigation, capability to create interactive report, integration of email feature. This software also holds key areas of functionality. These issues refer to issue management and monitoring, management of the project, documentation and compliance automation.

After the compliance with Sarbanes Oxley 404 many executives feel that there has been a lot of improvement in company’s documentation procedure after using the Sarbanes Oxley software offered by various vendors. Majority of key executives felt the need to have compliance with the law as it provides more transparent results and financial status of the company. It also offers more controls to key executives over documentation procedures.