Improving your audit trails on Master File updates:

On July 30, 2002, President Bush signed the Sarbanes-Oxley package of reforms into law, which includes new rules forcing companies to provide more timely, accurate financial reporting. Public companies have to file quarterly and year-end reports to the Securities and Exchange Commission under the new rules, have 10 fewer days in which to file quarterly reports and 30 fewer days to file the annual report. The law also created new SEC rules forcing top corporate executives to sign off, for the first time, on the integrity of their internal financial controls. Sarbanes-Oxley Act will have a major impact on the accounting industry, especially for public companies. Research "shows that 59% of finance departments among U.S. corporations are still supported by legacy systems. The upshot: Corporate America has a considerable ways to go to meet the SEC's new deadlines.( source: http://www.180systems.com/Index.htm; Accounting and ERP Systems).

I ran across a great tool for any Solomon users who are concerned about stronger audit trails. Solomon does a great job for audit trails for our transactional activity, but there is limited audit trails for changes to the “master files”, such as chart of accounts, vendor address, customer addresses etc. This product allows you to flag SQL tables and keep a history of changes (i.e. who, where, and what were the changes). This is a must for any public any who is struggling with developing internal procedures to meet the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. Let the Solomon IV software create the process via special reports.

Here is a sample of the data entry screen for determining which tables you want to monitor through this transactional audit report. It is possible to take your audit down to which user made a modification (i.e. add, change or delete); and what were the before and after fields values.

This screen shot above allows you to see who changed the AP setup table. This transactional log shows you what type of update occurred, who, when, and what were the original and the new values created with this update.

As you look to tighten up your internal procedures, why not ask Solomon with this add on module to track the changes for you and to use these tools to create stronger procedures and monitoring tools.

For more information, contact Larry Youngblood at lyoungblood@houston.rr.com or 281-897-6116 or give us a call at 408 379 1111 jcozens@systematicsol.com.