Sarbanes-Oxley: What About all the Spreadsheets?

Compliance-Appropriate Spreadsheet Testing

Sarbanes–Oxley compliance requirements have forced firms to look at their use of spreadsheets in financial reporting. They are finding that they have many spreadsheets and that testing and other formal development disciplines are rare. The literature on spreadsheet errors has shown that without strong controls, most spreadsheets will have material errors; this means that firms that use uncontro...

Spreadsheets and Sarbanes-Oxley: Regulations, Risks, and Control Frameworks

A spreadsheet life cycle analysis and the impact of Sarbanes-Oxley

a r t i c l e i n f o Past studies show that only a small percent of organizations implement and enforce formal rules or informal guidelines for the planning, design and development, usage, modification, and disposition stages of spread-sheet models. Due to the lack of such policies, there has been little research on how companies can effectively govern spreadsheets throughout their life cycle....

Controls over Spreadsheets for Financial Reporting in Practice

Past studies show that only a small percent of organizations implement and enforce formal rules or informal guidelines for the designing, testing, documenting, using, modifying, sharing and archiving of spreadsheet models. Due to lack of such policies, there has been little research on how companies can effectively govern spreadsheets throughout their life cycle. This paper describes a survey i...

Archiving: The Overlooked Spreadsheet Risk

This paper maintains that archiving has been overlooked as a key spreadsheet internal control. The case of failed Jamaican commercial banks demonstrates how poor archiving can lead to weaknesses in spreadsheet control that contribute to operational risk. In addition, the Sarbanes-0xley Act contains a number of provisions that require tighter control over the archiving of spreadsheets. To mitiga...