Writing procedures is an exercise in controlling the cost of compliance.  You’re trying to comply with customer expectations, management objectives, government regulations, and/or industry standards, making compliance expensive.  Regardless of the reason for compliance, wouldn’t you want to write as few procedures as possible if you could still conform to the compliance mandate and keep your compliance costs to a minimum?

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Historically, compliance has been the focus of most knowledge management systems.  Documenting business processes with policies and procedures is required by many standards such as for ISO 9000 Quality Management Systems, Sarbanes Oxley Accounting and Finance, or Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP) for the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).  But if we look closer at the intent of these standards then we see that we should be more concerned with control, to improve quality or reduce the risk of failure. (more…)

Small and medium-sized businesses rely on a steady, consistent stream of incoming cash – customers paying for goods and services with cash, checks, and credit cards. Many retail and service businesses have multiple people conducting cash transactions throughout the day. Creating a cash policy and cash procedure for important cash handling processes like cash drawer management, end of day closing, or cash in deposits, can be vital to protecting the life blood of your business. (more…)

What is the difference between a well-conceived and well-written accounting policy and a poorly conceived and poorly written accounting policy?  Of course, the needs of every organization are different, and the most important element of an accounting policy is that it helps the organization. Last week we mentioned the importance of gathering accounting policies into the accounting manual.  Now let’s review some important points to consider when crafting policies. (more…)

Using risk management techniques is an important component in creating the internal control required for compliance with Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) Section 404.  Risk management includes all the activities associated with identifying and reducing risk, as well as coping with negative events should they occur.  Identifying risks and creating systems and safeguards to ameliorate them is one way to create a basic internal control system. (more…)

It has been more than five years since most provisions of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 took effect (in mid- 2003). Many publicly traded companies, however, still seem to struggle with developing a confident understanding of compliance. (more…)

You may be familiar with the COSO (Committee of Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commission) framework for internal control. We have discussed it in past articles, and it has received significant attention when referenced by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) as an example of an “internal control” system as required by Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) sections 302 and 404. (more…)

With the implementation of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX), finance and accounting departments have scrambled in recent years to put in place internal control systems as required by SOX section 404. Compliance with SOX and SEC regulations are certainly good reasons for companies to create an internal control system. Small and medium size business (SMB) owners might wonder, though, how this applies to them or helps improve their business metrics. Perhaps you have a few investors or creditors and need to produce financial statements, but you don’t have to worry about complying with SEC or SOX regulations. Or do you? (more…)

In our previous article, we discussed procedure discovery and design. During discovery, your main goal is to understand the flow of information which, in turn, will tell you what is expected from the procedure or the process.

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Recently we talked about writing procedures to increase control. This week we’re talking about writing for results.

So, you have been tasked to write a procedure…but where do you start? I like to break the process into four parts: (more…)