July 11, 2005
Corporate Travel Another Area for Improvement in a SOX era
Prior to Sarbanes-Oxley, there was much less accountabililty on corporate travel. These days, this is an area that is receiving increased scrutiny. As every area of the income statement and balance sheet is reviewed for proper controls, this one is a good one to review.
In my former life as an internal auditor, we found a great deal of fraud in T&E review-some of which was just the tip of the iceberg. Sounds like we can take our hats off to SOX for improving costs for corporations and not just increasing them.
As time goes on, we continue to hear about more benefits from Sarbanes-Oxley.
An excerpt from and MSNBC article is here:
"Haley Johnson, a regional sales manager for Continental Airlines Inc. in Atlanta, says travel is among the largest controllable expenses on the corporate ledger and provides a big opportunity for fraud.
With Sarbanes-Oxley, or SOX, "you need basically an end-to-end audit trail," Johnson says.
Richard Davis, director of travel management for Birmingham-based HealthSouth Corp., says many companies have made little effort in the past to manage travel expenses.
"As long as everybody got their flight, they didn't worry about how much it cost," he says. But now, corporations are taking a close look at all of their internal systems to see whether proper controls are in place to handle spending issues, and that has brought a lot of travel-related issues to light.
For a lot of companies, the biggest issue is simply getting a handle on the big travel picture, Davis says. For the complete article, www.issuescentral.com to learn more about the Compliance Playbook(tm) and help rapidly and cost effectively comply with Sarbanes-Oxley - even in the area of T&E.
In my former life as an internal auditor, we found a great deal of fraud in T&E review-some of which was just the tip of the iceberg. Sounds like we can take our hats off to SOX for improving costs for corporations and not just increasing them.
As time goes on, we continue to hear about more benefits from Sarbanes-Oxley.
An excerpt from and MSNBC article is here:
"Haley Johnson, a regional sales manager for Continental Airlines Inc. in Atlanta, says travel is among the largest controllable expenses on the corporate ledger and provides a big opportunity for fraud.
With Sarbanes-Oxley, or SOX, "you need basically an end-to-end audit trail," Johnson says.
Richard Davis, director of travel management for Birmingham-based HealthSouth Corp., says many companies have made little effort in the past to manage travel expenses.
"As long as everybody got their flight, they didn't worry about how much it cost," he says. But now, corporations are taking a close look at all of their internal systems to see whether proper controls are in place to handle spending issues, and that has brought a lot of travel-related issues to light.
For a lot of companies, the biggest issue is simply getting a handle on the big travel picture, Davis says. For the complete article, www.issuescentral.com to learn more about the Compliance Playbook(tm) and help rapidly and cost effectively comply with Sarbanes-Oxley - even in the area of T&E.
