Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) is a US federal law aimed at ensuring that businesses are totally transparent in their financial reporting. The bill was enacted as a result of the major corporate scandals involving Enron, Tyco International and WorldCom.
While there is no direct comparison to make between SOX and a specific UK law, the fundamentals are applicable to any business regardless of the country in which it operates. The act seeks to disclose and make visible the origins and destinations of funds, effectively making it more difficult to commit fraud at corporate level.
Sarbanes Oxley comprises 11 different titles or areas that describe specific mandates and requirements for financial reporting. The central theme encompassing all of these topics is increased scrutiny surrounding reporting and auditability.
In order to dispel any preconceptions, there is no such thing as a SOX-compliant piece of software - the business itself must be compliant, not the tools being used. Though not developed specifically around SOX regulatory concerns, Albany's software aims to meet a number of them through its features.
Reporting: As stated in the Corporate Responsibility section of the SOX titles, senior executives at an organisation are required to take personal responsibility for the accuracy and completeness of financial reports.
Albany's software products enable a vast array of reports to be generated and exported at every stage of the processing cycle, ensuring there will always be an audit trail to trace transactions back if required. Due to the sensitive nature of the data, reports are not necessarily available to all users of the software and generally are only available to individuals of certain seniority, or within a specific authorised role.
Audit Trails: Title 2 of SOX is called Auditor Independence, stating that auditing partners must be rotated to ensure impartiality - and restricts auditing companies from providing non-audit services.
In order to satisfy auditing requirements fully, it is important for an organisation to be able to, at any time, provide an expansive record of access to its financial systems. For this reason, Albany Software includes comprehensive audit trail facilities in all of its products.
Fraud: Corporate Fraud Accountability, identifies cases of corporate fraud more effectively and strengthens the penalties for committing it. It also grants the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) the right to freeze payments deemed abnormal.
While this regulation effectively adds an extra layer of security to guard against unusual transactions, it would be preferable not to reach that stage at all. Albany Software includes user access rights and restrictions as standard in all of its business tools, meaning that you can easily prevent a user from accessing a certain function or report present in the program. For example: a payroll administrator may be able to process a payment, but only the finance director could be allowed to send it for processing.
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