Accounting software

The article in which I have decided to discuss is entitled "Mending the Holes in Sox. The Control Matrix as an internal Audit tool". This particular article goes well with our discussion in chapter 9 on the Control Matrix. With in this article the authors uses examples of the cash receipts process to show how the control matrix system will help any company no matter what type of work they do. It starts off by informing us that internal control systems are not always good and that sometimes they fail to prevent fraud from accruing especially when the fraud is coming from those in management. They use for example the Enron scandal which was one of the main reasons in which the Sarbanes-Oxley Act was passed into law. The Enron scandal was when the top management began to falsify their financials in order to gain more investors so that they may reason more money. The U.S. Congress late implemented the Sarbanes-Oxley Act after the WorldCom Scandal which was another scandal like enroll. Section 404 of the Sox Act "mandates management of public companies to establish, document, and assess the effectiveness of their internal control structures" (Reed/Pence, PG.18). The article also talks about how control matrixes and flow charts have become better ways of documenting internal controls. "Flow chartings is used to graphically show the control structure, thus giving internal auditors a better understanding of the operating processes" (Reed/Pence, P.18). The article informs us that auditors have a 5 steps process when it comes to internal controls. The five steps are as follows: "1. conducts a walk through, 2. create a structured narrative, 3. develop a flow chart, 4. construct a control matrix, and 5. anaylze the control matrix process" (Reed/Pence, P.22).

A Control Matrix is "a tool designed to assist you in evaluating the potential effectiveness of controls in a particular business process by matching controls goals with relevant controls plans "