Cross Industry Cross Compliance - Governance, Risk, and Compliance Topic for Oracle Applications - page 300

Important sections of the act and the
technologies that apply
The famous sections of Sarbanes-Oxley are explained in Chapter 5 , Risk Assessment and
Control Verification, , Chapter 6 , Documenting Your Controls , and Chapter 7 , Managing Your
Testing Phase: Management Testing and Certifying Controls . What we explain here are
some sections that are also very important, that were not so much of a gold rush for
the auditing profession, but nonetheless, have some significant technology impacts.
Title 1: Establishment and Operation of the Public
Company Accounting Oversight Board
Sections 101 through 109 establish the composition of the Board of Directors and
the requirement for Public Accounting firms to register with the Public Company
Accounting Oversight Board ( PCAOB ).
Section 103 is probably the only section where technology may assist. It is again
more targeted at the public accounting firm than the company being audited, but it
is a great statement of best practice. It requires the accounting firm to hold working
papers that back an audit opinion for seven years. This should probably be reflected
in the document management system of the audited company and the records
retention policies for those record types. (Refer to the Managing Records Retention
Policies with Content Management Server section in Chapter 2 , Corporate Governance .)
Title 2: Auditor Independence
Sections 201 through 209 are all about auditor independence .
Sections 201 and 202 are all about services that an auditor cannot provide to the
clients that they are auditing to ensure that any audit opinion is not colored by the
prospect of other business with that client. To this end you should implement Holds
with the Accounts Payable system to ensure that invoices are vetted by the audit
committee to ensure that the services rendered are actually audit services. This is the
thrust of section 202 to get pre-approval of any non-audit services. In order to set up
the Audit firm as a supplier and ensure purchase orders and payments are subject
to holds and approvals, log in using the Payables Management responsibility and
navigate to Supplier Inquiry . Inquire on a supplier and click on the Edit icon, as
shown in the following screenshot: