August 27, 2004
PCAOB shows its Teeth
The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB), established in accordance with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, just issued a wrist slap to the accounting firms yesterday in a news release.
They found in that in limited inspections "significant audit and accounting issues that were missed by the firms and identified concerns about significant aspects of each firm's quality controls systems."
While the report goes onto say that "criticisms do not reflect any broad negative assessment of the firms' audit practices...”.
What this means to public companies and their Section 404 certifications is: you better make sure YOU are certain about your internal controls. While your accounting firm has to sign off that everything is all right, they do not have the final word. Doing the minimum for any publicly held company may not yield the results a CFO and CEO wants.
For more information on Issues Central Sarbanes-Oxley Compliance Playbook (tm) see www.issuescentral.com
They found in that in limited inspections "significant audit and accounting issues that were missed by the firms and identified concerns about significant aspects of each firm's quality controls systems."
While the report goes onto say that "criticisms do not reflect any broad negative assessment of the firms' audit practices...”.
What this means to public companies and their Section 404 certifications is: you better make sure YOU are certain about your internal controls. While your accounting firm has to sign off that everything is all right, they do not have the final word. Doing the minimum for any publicly held company may not yield the results a CFO and CEO wants.
For more information on Issues Central Sarbanes-Oxley Compliance Playbook (tm) see www.issuescentral.com
