FINANCIAL CONTROLS Software Solution

The Challenge

Since the introduction of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act in 2002, financial reporting regulations have proliferated across the globe. Regulations including the Combined Code in the UK, ASX Principle 7 in Australia and Bill 198/CSA 52-313 in Canada have been implemented; all designed to provide greater confidence to stakeholders in regards to the accuracy of financial reports and associated disclosures made by corporations.

While corporations have so far managed to meet the strict financial reporting requirements, the processes, spreadsheets and software tools employed have proven manifestly complex and will not be sustainable into the future.

With the regulatory landscape ever-expanding, corporations must implement a sustainable and repeatable compliance model to minimize the burden of ongoing control assessment, testing, reporting and disclosure.

Failure to systematize control maintenance and remediation and to automate assessment processes will commit corporations to substantial ongoing costs, control ineffectiveness and extensive challenges in satisfying financial control reporting and disclosure efforts.

Leaders4 - Financial Controls Management Solution

Leaders4 from 80-20 Software is a totally integrated Governance, Risk Management and Compliance (GRC) solution. Leaders4 promotes a unique top down, risk based approach to testing and assessment of financial controls, which ensures that the cost and effort of control assessment and testing is proportional to control risk.

Incorporating document management, workflow and intuitive reporting capabilities to drive financial controls documentation, testing, certification and disclosures, Leaders4:

In addition, Leaders4 drives a measurable reduction in external audit fees by ensuring:

Following a proven deployment methodology and harnessing the outputs of manual financial controls management and certification efforts, Leaders4 from 80-20 software provides a complete sustainable financial control compliance solution.

Features & Benefits

Flexible control testing model - a two-tiered approach, where key controls are subjected to formal assessment and testing and secondary control effectiveness are evaluated by surveying line management, reducing the overall number of controls requiring formal testing

Single compliance repository for all control data - all controls, documentation, test results, evidence and other artefacts are retained in one single repository managed in accordance with record retention obligations

Risk based financial control management - unique top-down risk assessment model ensures ongoing identification of high-risk controls and provides a means for focussing control testing efforts on high risk controls

Automation of control testing and assessment processes - Leaders4 automatically notifies and prompts control owners of pending assessments and provides them with access to all needed collateral

Real-time visibility over compliance status - flexible, real-time reporting, giving immediate insight into control effectiveness status and revealing compliance hot spots

Remediation management of critical failures - ineffective controls automatically subjected to the remediation management process

Escalation of control assessment and test failures - failed or overdue control tests are automatically raised to the attention of control owners and management

Support of audit assurance process - Leaders4 incorporates two levels of assurance testing, for internal and external audit teams to assess the effectiveness of the control environment

Facilitates Quarterly Certification -- information captured in Leaders4 relating to financial controls flows through to support quarterly SOX 302 certification which can also be completely managed by the Leaders4 system

Control Environment Changes - easily support changes to entity structures and control models with full historical retention

Download "Achieving Sustainable Sarbanes-Oxley S404 Compliance" Solution Paper

Download "Achieving Sustainable Sarbanes-Oxley Section 404 Compliance" Datasheet

Download "Effective Management of Sarbanes-Oxley S302 Certification" Solution Paper

Download "Effective Management of Sarbanes-Oxley Section 302" Datasheet

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