Sarbanes Oxley 404 – A More Difficult Road to Compliance

Sarbanes Oxley 404 refers to a section of the newly enacted law that regards a companies’ management assessment of internal financial controls. Some of the language in the Sarbanes Oxley 404 section specifically directs the SEC to assure that publicly traded companies have instated a code of ethics for its senior financial officers and that the nature of that code be divulged. Concurrently the Sarbanes Oxley 404 section instructs the SEC to revise its own rules for prompt disclosure of any change in or waiver from a said companies adopted code of ethics. Initially, only public companies with market capitalizations equivalent or in excess of $75 million are expected to comply with the June 15 deadline stated in Sarbanes Oxley 404.

Sarbanes Oxley 404 requires all publicly traded companies to comply with its parameters, however, companies that report market capitalizations of less than $75 million have until the end of the fiscal year ending on or after April 15, 2005. Sarbanes Oxley 404 compliance is proving to be more difficult for many companies than they had initially forecasted. Expense of compliance is proving to be much higher than anticipated as businesses struggle to establish their internal accounting controls. Many are placing extra pressure on their IT departments to implement software packages that will create and maintain accountability and compliance with Sarbanes Oxley 404.

Sarbanes Oxley 404 has pushed other companies to drastically increase their internal accountant’s man hours to keep the books polished. Though the value of Sarbanes Oxley 404 compliance may seem like an unnecessary strain to many the benefits to companies’ financial officers will be tremendous. By establishing a comprehensive and easily auditable internal accounting infrastructure publicly traded companies will be able to make sure that they will not be able to have lawsuits brought against them, jail time levied, or fines handed down for non compliance with Sarbanes Oxley 404.

Preparing Windows Servers for Sarbanes Oxley Section 404 Testing and Auditing

Sarbanes Oxley Section 404 Deadline

Sarbanes Oxley Compliance - No Easy Trick

Sarbanes Oxley Compliance Articles

Section 404 Internal Controls