Concur Unveils Sarbanes-Oxley Compliance Solutions

Seattle-based enterprise ISV Concur Technologies Inc. Wednesday added to its Corporate Expense Management portfolio with the Concur Compliance Solution.

“Expense management automation improves a company’s ability to report that appropriate internal controls are in place and that employees are in adherence with defined policies and procedures,” said Steve Singh, chairman and chief executive officer for Concur Technologies Inc. “Our Corporate Expense Management solutions, coupled with the Concur Compliance Solution, provides companies with the confidence that their expense management system is reliable and accurate, and that its assets are adequately safeguarded, all of which position the company and its management to provide favorable certifications and reports under the Sarbanes-Oxley internal controls reporting requirements.”

Under Sections 302 and 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, public companies must now certify the adequacy of their ‘internal controls’ for financial reporting purposes. The Concur Compliance Solution enables public companies to more fully comply with their certification and reporting obligations by ensuring that financial transactions are properly authorized and recorded, and that assets are adequately safeguarded.

Travel and entertainment (T&E) expenses can reach into the millions of dollars in annual expenditures for public companies, drawing the focus of auditors who examine the adequacy of internal processes, as well as the government regulators charged with enforcing these new laws.

As a result, public companies that rely on a manual, paper-based expense reporting process may find it more difficult to certify the adequacy of their internal controls, as such manual processes increase the risk of inaccurate financial data and user manipulation.

“Sarbanes-Oxley will require financial management solutions that can provide greater visibility, communication, control and fraud prevention,” said John Van Decker, Vice President at Meta Group. “Travel and entertainment expenses represent a unique category of spend since it is driven primarily by a company’s entire employee base. Process automation provides an important framework that integrates approval and workflow processes enabling a far greater level of visibility and control than exists in manual environments and if not already automated, should be high on the enterprise list of future IT projects.”

Concur Expense automates the T&E expense management process — from expense report preparation and approval to policy compliance, data analysis, and reimbursement. Travelers prepare expense reports aided by the direct pre-population of expense data from their corporate charge card and mobile devices. Expense reports are automatically routed to managers, who can approve expense reports on-line and receive immediate notification of non-compliant entries. Expense reports are delivered to Accounting departments on-line and automatically link to financial and payroll systems, eliminating the need to re-key expense data.

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