Complying with Sarbanes-Oxley

How Microsoft Navision Can Help Companies Meet The Newly Adopted Legal Requirements  

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 was signed into law in response to a series of corporate financial scandals involving companies such as WorldCom, Global Crossing, and Enron. These companies and others admitted to misrepresenting their financial statements by billions of dollars. As a result, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission launched investigations into these frauds, and the U.S. Senate created new regulations in an attempt to prevent history from repeating itself.

From an accounting system standpoint, a key to compliance with Sarbanes-Oxley is the presence of an extensive audit trail, complete with drill-down and drill-around functionality. The idea is to provide the ability to trace source documents through the accounting systems to the final financial statements, and back to the original source documents. This is where Microsoft Navision can help. With Navision you can drill from the customer setup screen, to all customer transactions, to the posted sales journal, to a posted sales invoice, to an item on that invoice, to the inventory listing, to pictures and statistics for that item. To users who want to be able to track down transactions and dig for underlying data, Microsoft Navision offers an impressive solution.

Of course an audit trail would be incomplete without an assortment of drill-down and drill-around tools. For this reason, Microsoft Navision includes the following drilling tools:

PowerDrill Tools navigate detailed transactions to the various modules and down to the originating documents. The PowerDrill tools can also be used to build lookups.

PowerSeek Tools sort the data in any order you prefer. 

PowerFilter Tools build specific queries combining multiple fields of data. For example, you can build a query that summarizes customers in specific states, cities, and zip codes. You can also build queries that summarize assigned territories, salespeople, and other important data for use in direct mail campaigns.

NavisionFilter Tools slice your numbers across departments, projects, dates, and other parameters important to your business.

TrendScape Tools display trends in your numbers on an annual, quarterly, monthly, weekly, or even daily basis. You can also define your own set of periods to analyze the results of promotions, special offerings, or the impact of major economic events. The TrendScape tools can handle many years of data.

These tools provide a window that can display only the accounts, customers, entries, or other records that fulfill a particular condition. For example, with a simple click of a button, you can have the system display only the customer cards under the jurisdiction of the San Francisco office. The user can easily produce a Customer List that has been filtered to display only the desired customers (those in San Francisco). This type of functionality is provided throughout Microsoft Navision.

You can set and remove a restriction on any record field. This is because filters remain in effect until you remove them or replace them with new ones. To remove a filter, select the function View -> Show All.

To place a restriction on one field, you can use what’s known as a field filter. To filter more than one field at a time, you can use a table filter function. Field filters and table filters perform exactly the same function. However, a field filter places a filter only on the field that contains the cursor.

If you are in the habit of using only field filters, it can be good to use the table filter feature occasionally to get an overview of all the filters that have been placed on a window. When you enter a filter, you can use all the numbers and letters that you can ordinarily use in the field. In addition, you can use some special symbols or mathematical expressions.

Sarbanes-Oxley has raised the bar for public companies, and failure to comply can result in harsh penalties. A key to compliance with this law is to implement an accounting system that offers an extensive audit trail, including extensive drill-down and drill around capabilities. As suggested in this article, Microsoft Navision does a good job of meeting this requirement. Microsoft Navision users would be wise to embrace these capabilities.

This article by J. Carlton Collins, CPA, is reprinted by permission from the Accounting Software Advisor. Carlton Collins, an independent author, lecturer and analyst,, is president of ASA Research, LLC. He has installed more than 200 accounting systems and delivered 1,800 lectures around the world on the subject of accounting systems and technology.

For more information on using Navision for Sarbanes-Oxley compliance, or to see a demo of these features in Navision, contact an SCS Account Executive at (800) 655-5284.