Jim Kaplan's
|
|
|||||
AuditNet
Links
|
||||||
|
|
Sponsor News!
Thanks for your support in the past and looking forward to continued support in the future. AuditNet® is a sponsor-supported site. Without sponsor advertising you would have to pay for use of this site. This month check out ACL Services Ltd. providing Business Assurance solutions to financial executives and audit professionals worldwide. Combining market-leading software and professional services, ACL's proven solutions enable internal auditors to assure compliance, reduce risk, and minimize loss. ACL's global customer base includes 89 of the Fortune 100 and over half of the Global 500. In addition a new affiliate BizManual has joined the AuditNet® family. Remember! Clicking on sponsored ads helps support AuditNet®. Quarterly Disclosures Questionnaire The purpose of this questionnaire is to facilitate the quarterly assessment of controls surrounding the financial reporting process. This questionnaire can be provided to managers or process owners to support efforts to identify any changes in controls, and to help meet the requirements set out by the SEC. This questionnaire was contributed by Protiviti KnowledgeLeader, an online service providing tools, templates, and other resources for internal audit and risk management. Free trials available at www.knowledgeleader.com. For a limited time KnowledgeLeader memberships are available for the reduced rate of $500 per year. Tell them you heard about it from AuditNet.org. Click here for the questionnaire. Free Software Tool Available for Sarbanes-Oxley and Sarbanes-Oxley and Internal Audit in a Snapshot by Jean-Louis Vergaert
(To address the mounting debate about the requirement to document the internal controls in order to comply with SOX, a new software is now available free of charge. This software allows the user to design risk templates, or to use the comprehensive set of risk templates already included, and to document the controls in place, the corrective measures and follow-up within every business unit. It runs on a simple client version of Lotus Notes (costing less than US$ 100 and downloadable free on IBM site). This software is SOXERM (for Sarbanes-Oxley Enterprise Risk Management). Click here for more information or the manual.) The full Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) Act is 66 pages long, and you will be surprised to hear that there is only one mention of “internal audit” in it: it is now a prohibited service for the public accounting firms. However, the Internal Auditors know that their life will be impacted. Indeed, SOX significantly affects 2 of our working partners: our distinguished superiors (the Audit Committee and the Company Officers) and the public accounting companies, who are both understandingly worried of their increased reporting responsibilities and the new criminal penalties. For the rest of the story click here! AuditNet Job Listings (& more) Looking for an audit job? Go to the AuditNet® Audit Jobs section for the latest job opportunities. 24 hours a day, 7 days a week you have the ability to not only look at available jobs, but you can also post your resume, apply for open jobs, research companies and obtain career advice. If you are in the market for a new job, make AuditNet® your first stop to check out what's available. This is just another benefit of using AuditNet® as your one stop shop for all your audit and career resources. Click here for more jobs! Beyond the Audit ScopeBy Tom Crouch, CPA, CIA, CISA, and Attorney External auditors and other auditors are frequently assigned audits with a very focused audit scope. The auditors usually do a good job of conducting these audits and communicating the results related to the audit scope. However, if the auditors notice an issue not within the audit scope, they often times fail to communicate these observations. The auditors and accountants may not be maximizing audit value when these other matters are not discussed. For the rest of the article click here. Looking for Auditors? If your company has any audit job vacancies that you are looking to fill, have your HR people contact AuditNet® to post the job and search for candidates. Using the jobs section helps support AuditNet® as well! For more information click here. AuditNet® Resource List UpdatesPlease let us know of links that are not working! Free Sarbanes-Oxley Software Made Available
To address the mounting debate about the requirement to
document the Click here for details.
The only periodical of its kind bringing useful and timely advice and insights into the prevention detection, and investigation of all forms of computer and Internet crime. The December 2003 issue includes the following articles: Keep Your Information Secure When You Hand Over the Keys to an Outside Contractor, Information Security Essentials for Frontline Employees and more. For more information visit www.cybercrimefighter.net Addressing Human Capital Risks by Kastuv Ray It is widely believed that people are the true assets of an organization. In fact, many organizations have the following corporate goal stated in their Strategic Plan: The aim of the organization is to promote and provide a
positive working environment for its employees. AuditNet® Conference Corner Want to announce your professional association conference to the global audit community? Send the conference name, date and URL details to editor@auditnet.org
Industry Audit Series: Gaming Conference
General Audit Management Conference AuditNet® Book Reviews Payables Test Set for ACL by Richard B. Lanza For the review click here! AuditNet® Vendor News Check here for the latest news from our AuditNet® sponsors! ACL Launches New Continuous Controls Monitoring Solutions AuditNet® StatisticsFor
those who like to wade through the details on how popular AuditNet®
is, click
here for the current stats or go to the online
WebTrends
report. |
The Auditor's Guide to Internet Resources, 2nd Edition! It Takes a Special Person To Be An Auditor by Ralph Kolts (I wrote the attached as a year-end thank-you to my staff. It talks about the important work done by internal audit and the special people who do it. I've given it the title: It Takes a Special Person to be an Auditor. These are things required of an auditor that you will never see in a job description.) The job of an internal auditor is to evaluate, analyze, reach conclusions, and provide objective opinions. The job is like that of a doctor, assessing the health of the company, diagnosing illness, and prescribing a course to recovery. To do this, the auditor must possess special qualities. To read the rest of the story click here. Stay tuned for the return of Internet boot camp tips from the auditing Internet guru! Audit Work Programs Corner Auditors Sharing Audit Programs and Working Papers The following audit programs, ICQs, checklist
or working papers were added this
month. They are in
Audit Documents in the Queue! The following audit documents will be posted next month. Interested in them now? Send an audit work program, ICQ, checklist or other audit template and receive them via e-mail. Your contribution must include your name and email address.
AuditNet® What's New This Month? New pages were recently added to AuditNet® for Service Efforts and Accomplishments Reporting and Balanced Scorecard for Auditors. There is a new monograph on Electronic Records Management: An Audit Briefing now available. For these resources and more go to the AuditNet® Online Virtual Audit Library (OVAL). New partner discounts are available from Patton and Patton, Cash Flow Guardian and Pleier Corporation. AuditNet® is now partnering with a new affiliate, BizManual which offers an excellent accounting policies and procedures manual. A new free tool for Sarbanes-Oxley is available from AAFAudit
Using Excel as an Audit Software A new online document, available for free through AuditSoftware.Net, plans to help organizations use Microsoft Excel in the auditing and analysis of company data files. Through improved data analysis, companies can more efficiently and effectively gain assurance that internal controls are working and that fraud opportunities are minimized. For the rest of the story click here. Software Compliance Audit News
Is Software Auditing a task for internal management or externally sourced advisers? by Rob Harmer
Software Auditing has been around for years, as a requirement for
organizations that wish to reduce their own risk and establish a
position which gives them a level of comfort as to their state of
compliance. It has been found by many to be a useful technique,
whilst others have found it a real burden. This article addresses
some of the issues faced with conducting an audit.
For the rest of the story click here.
Your Secret Weapon in the War on Fraud The December issue of this fraud newsletter features articles on Corporate Governance in the Post Sarbanes-Oxley World: Practical Reform Measures, Secrets of Successful Internal Fraud Investigations, Random Acts of Fraud and more. AuditNet® users qualify for special rates on this publication. For more information click here. The AuditNet® Audit Bookstore Looking for books on auditing related topics? We suggest using the AuditNet® bookstore. The bookstore focuses on Internal Audit but includes other related subjects as well. AuditNet® uses Amazon to power the bookstore so each purchase you make through this link helps support AuditNet®. This Months
Featured Book
|
||||
| q | ||||||
or
format. Some may only be available in
exchange for an audit work program contribution. They are also available in alternate
format by email in exchange for a contribution of an audit work
program, ICQ or checklist.
Beginning in August 2003 all new programs contributed will include the
date the program was contributed to the inventory (mm/yy). This was at
the suggestion of an AuditNet® user.
