The Sarbanes-Oxley
Act of 2002, or SOX , is a US law passed in 2002 to strengthen
corporate governance and restore investor confidence after
accounting scandals that had recently surfaced (Enron, etc.). It
was important to strengthen corporate governance and restore
investor confidence by promoting transparency, accountability
and integrity in financial reporting.
The Sarbanes-Oxley Act contains 11 sections, but the section
that is quoted most often is the Sarbanes-Oxley Act section 404
(S404), which specifies the level of internal control and the
auditing standards needed.
However, a product in itself can never be compliant with or
certified for SOX, nor can a supplier of a specific product be
compliant or certified as a supplier. Only the company using a
product can comply with the law.
How does this relate to
ReadSoft's invoice processing software?
The key to the Sarbanes-Oxley Act is protecting the financial
systems and ensuring that no one can tamper with the numbers,
and that controls are in place for accurate financial reporting.
One key area is the accounts payable process. Although the
Sarbanes-Oxley Act does not state any specific requirements for
the products supporting the accounts payable and invoice
process, CEOs and CFOs will make sure they buy systems that help
them exercise the internal control that is required by the SOX
law.
ReadSoft DOCUMENTS for Invoices is one such system. It helps
organizations comply with SOX.
How ReadSoft DOCUMENTS for Invoices supports SOX compliance:
OCR / ICR technology is very effective for getting correct data
into systems. It is generally recognized that using this
technology results in significantly fewer errors than entering
data manually. The quality of the data can also easily be
improved by validation routines, either internally (for example
by checking the sum of the items against the total) or
externally (for example by comparing extracted data with
external databases or other systems).
After incoming documents are captured and digitized, it is
generally possible to track everything that is done with them,
and with the data that is extracted from them, as well as who
does it. A digitized document is also the basis for digital
archiving, another technology that offers additional support
toward compliance.
ReadSoft DOCUMENTS for Invoices supports compliance with the
Sarbanes-Oxley Act, providing the security and flexibility that
can be expected from a mission critical process. Special
attention has been given to the security requirements from SOX
and from ReadSoft customers, specifically in these areas:
· Authentication and authorization
· Audit trail
· Other security-related measures such as data security,
four-eyes principle, license control, reliable services,
maintenance plans and encryption.
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