Every company undergoing sarbanes oxley compliance generally categorizes its controls based on automated or manual. With new softwares and technology coming in, many controls which earlier used to be manual in
nature are today automated. Automated controls are normally, better and more efficient to maintain than manual controls.

One of the most key advantages of having automated controls is that they do not depend upon people to perform them. With year one of sarbanes oxley over, company's which have documented their business processes can have a relook at their controls. This can help them to identify controls which presently are manual, but which can be automated in the future. Testing manual controls can be resource intensive and a lengthy process. Automated controls also save time in control testing. For manual controls, a larger sample size needs to be selected to get the same comfort. On the other hand with automated controls, simply if one checks the system configuration, one can be sure that all transactions have been processed correctly. I am not saying that company's should go and replace all their manual controls with automated ones. But, there should be a right balance between manual and automated controls.

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