Regulatory Compliance with Priority Software provided by TechCM

Priority Enables SOX, IFRS and GAAP Compliancy

The ability to keep up with changing compliance standards is one of the key features available in Priority.

Companies have had to comply with international trade, federal and other regulatory requirements for decades. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (commonly called SOX), enacted in response to a number of major corporate and accounting scandals, including Enron, is designed to validate the accuracy of the financial records of a company. International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) are standards and interpretations adopted by the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB), and Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) is the standard framework of guidelines for financial accounting and includes the standards, conventions and rules accountants follow when recording and summarizing transactions and preparing financial statements. These regulatory standards require organizations to implement an internal control framework for maintaining auditable business transactions, financial transparency and real-time reporting, along with operational controls to audit, for example, changes to software within the organization.

Priority includes, among others, these key SOX compliance functions:

• Internal control: documentation, testing and sign-off controls
• Log of statuses and changes to documents and reports
• Workflow procedures that facilitate testing and sign-off
• Verifiable audit trails
• Authorization administration and enforcement
• Automated processes for setting up and enforcing business rules, including clear and understandable graphic representations
• Real-time drill-down analysis and reporting
• Executive and consolidated

In compliance with IFRS and GAAP standards, Priority supports, among other features of the regulations:

• Comprehensive financial statements: including a balance sheet, income statement, a statement of recognized income and/or expenses, and a cash flow statement
• Comparative information for previous reporting periods
• Consolidated statements
• Measurement and calculation (including depreciation) of property, plant and equipment
• Inventory (stock)
• Receivables (debtors) and payables (creditors)
• Borrowing
• Revenue
• Employee costs
• Income taxes
• Cash flow statements
• Leasing
• Amortized costs

These compliance standards apply to the financial and often operational practices of all U.S. public and publically traded companies, as well as public accounting firms. Many global companies (banking institutions, municipalities, etc.) are also bound by these regulations. Though it does not apply to privately held companies, many aspire to compliancy, even though they are not presently obligated to do so.

The common elements for these standards are auditing capabilities, controlling for discrepancies and transparency. SOX compliancy, for example, requires the CEO and CFO to sign off on the effectiveness of internal company controls to validate the accuracy of financial reports and working practices. Authorization of an external accounting body is also required. While in the past accountants looked primarily at numbers, today they need to examine the working practices of a company and the checks and balances that are set up to monitor these practices. The point of monitoring is to identify discrepancies or problems that affect financial statements and proper business management of the enterprise.

In the process of achieving company compliance with any of the regulatory standards, a review of the consolidation report must be conducted, identifying the companies and the primary items to be consolidated. For every item, the processes affecting the numbers are examined - so, for example, purchasing processes are reviewed in relation to cash flow. Descriptions and documentation of the processes are drawn up, and the critical points which can open the company to risk are identified. For each risk item, a check or control is set up to neutralize the potential breach. Depending on the control in place, the company must perform effective checks - prepare a test plan, run the tests and address any issues that arise. Priority supports these controls and helps companies put them in place with its comprehensive BPM functionality, including email alerts and automatic escalations.

The ramifications for implementing SOX or other compliancy regulations on the chosen ERP system are twofold:

• The financial reports of the company are dependent on the management systems of the company, and in that sense the physical security of information, logic, management of communications with subcontractors, supplies/software purchases, SLA and more are all monitored and tested.
• The management system is monitored for its business practices and controls. The more the organization's controls are computerized and on-line, the easier the controls and oversight is to manage, and the simpler the sampling for compliancy.

Many of our customers are using Priority for their regulatory compliance enforcement, auditing and reporting. Priority's compliance capabilities are based on the quantitative characteristics of any solid financial statement: clarity, relevance, reliability and comparability, making it a key tool for companies aspiring to financial regulatory compliance and control.

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