With the advent of Sarbanes Oxley legislation, stress has shifted to disclosing material information to all stakeholders in real time. In line with this, concept of Disclosure Controls has come into existence. Disclosure controls on a very broad level are a component of the internal control system. Disclosure controls help the company to gather, evaluate and communicate to management financial and non financial information which the CEO and CFO can review prior to disclosure in an SEC report ona timely basis.

To ensure disclosure controls are put in place two things are important. I normally advise clients to take a process appoach to have better disclosures. Such process should meet two basic criteria -

One, information required is recorded, processed, summarized and reported within the required time periods.

Secondly, such accumulated information is communicated to management to allow timely decision making regarding disclosure.

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Public Accounting firms , Auditing Quality Control , SOX for Small Businesses