Sarbanes-Oxley ( SOX ) Compliance Software Features & Benefits

Software for Automating and Sustaining SOX Compliance

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act ( SOX ) poses challenges never before seen in corporate America. Not only is the level of scrutiny broader and more extensive under this law, it also makes CEOs and CFOs personally accountable for any financial misstatements. Public companies are discovering that unlike any other regulation, SOX compliance is a state, not an event. It requires continuous monitoring and reassessment of financial risks and controls to close any loopholes that could potentially lead to misstated financial statements.

How can MasterControl Sox? Benefit You?

MasterControl SOX? is an easy-to-use, comprehensive compliance software for automating and managing business processes, as well as controlling voluminous documents, records, and SOPs in a secure environment. Here's a glimpse of how MasterControl can help ease some of the key challenges of SOX compliance.

SOX Compliance Challenges		MasterControl SOX? Software Solution
High Cost A manual document and process tracking system is labor-intensive and ineffective. It makes compliance costly in terms of external-auditor billings and man-hours spent by the internal compliance team performing unnecessary tasks, such as locating documents, recreating lost documents and test results.		Cost-Effective By automating the SOX environment under a centralized system, external auditors will be able to search and retrieve documents and testing results easily, resulting in savings in billable hours. Automated task assignments, routing, escalation, review, and approval will increase efficiency for the internal compliance team.
Difficult to Manage Change SOX entails constantly revising and updating documents for ongoing compliance as financial processes change. A manual system can't keep up with the revisions, approval tracking, audit trails and other change control requirements.		Easy to Manage Change Templates from current disclosures can be easily modified for future compliance and easily updated when there's an important financial issue that requires immediate reporting. Changes are automatically tracked and approvals are streamlined. SOX compliance history will always be accessible.
Lack of Connectivity SOX documents created using disparate tools (Excel, Microsoft Word, Visio, audit applications, etc.) in multiple facilities are hard to collect, collate, retrieve, and are easily misplaced.		Connected MasterControl connects all SOX processes under a single Web-based platform. Risks, controls, and tests are linked for traceability. All SOX documentation will be in a secure, centralized system that can be accessed by users and auditors from virtually anywhere.
Unwarranted legal exposure Incriminating, sensitive documents need to be expunged immediately after the required retention period to prevent unwarranted legal exposure, a difficult task in a manual system.		Controlled legal exposure With MasterControl SOX, a company doesn't have to keep sensitive records longer than it needs to. Records can be retained according to company policy, anywhere from 24 hours to several years or longer. Retention can be configured by document type.
Low confidence in compliance When the system that monitors, tracks, and reports the results of internal controls and tests is ineffective and inefficient, then the CEO and CFO have low confidence on the accuracy of the financial statements that they are required to certify and on the overall compliance environment.		Increased confidence MasterControl's advanced tracking and reporting capability provides real-time view of a company's SOX environment and allows continuous monitoring and promotes improvement ? all of which can help increase confidence among executives, process owners, and auditors.

Features

MasterControl SOX? provides a complete and robust solution that ensures sustained compliance. Here are some of its powerful features:

Dynamic Organizers - MasterControl's Organizer, similar to Windows Explorer, is an easy-to-use and dynamic tool for grouping and correlating financial statements with the appropriate business processes, controls, and tests.

• Automatically assigns document and form links for easy finding and viewing of documents.

• Allows users to organize and view information by business process and/or financial statement.

• Automatically retrieves and fills virtual folders within Organizers based on pre-defined queries.

• Can be archived to ensure that previous disclosures can be viewed intact.

• Documents can be rearranged in different Organizers for future compliance work without changing the documents themselves.

Risk-Control-Test Form - MasterControl provides a preconfigured form that documents and collects data pertaining to the most important elements of SOX compliance: risks for different business processes that could potentially affect financial statements; internal controls to minimize such risks; and continuous testing of controls to ensure their effectiveness.

• Links every risk with its control and test through pre-built workflows. It incorporates escalation to ensure that the test is completed.
• Testing can be automatically scheduled to ensure that it's never overlooked.
• MasterControl's powerful analytics and reporting tool analyzes RCT data and produces a myriad of reports, including the ability to immediately identify any failed controls.
• MasterControl offers the option to trigger corrective action once a failure is identified to foster continuous improvement of the SOX environment.

Risk-Control-Test Assessment Tool - This innovative tool reduces the time and effort needed in establishing new SOX cycles.

• Allows importation of RCT data from current disclosures en masse. Each RCT form is automatically configured, eliminating errors in manual/individual transfer of information from every form.
• Configures scheduled tasks for all tests.
• RCT data can be similarly exported in bulk to prepare for subsequent compliance work.

Analytics and Reporting Tool - MasterControl's advanced reporting capabilities include the following customizable reports with online charting:

• Risks/controls/test matrix
• Risks by business process or financial statement
• Significant control report, significant risk report
• Test summary by control

• Non-effective control report
• Test failure/exception report

Sustained Compliance: The MasterControl SOX solution is designed not only to help you attain compliance ? but to sustain it year after year ? by simplifying your SOX environment, fostering efficiency, and keeping compliance costs down. MasterControl provides not only high-quality software solutions, but also comprehensive product training and technical support. More importantly, with MasterControl, you are not just buying a software solution. You are choosing a partner that is committed to your success and will support your compliance efforts over the long haul.