How much does compliance really cost you?
September 8, 2008 by Carol KatarskyPosted in: Best practices, In this week's e-newsletter, Latest news & views
No one would argue against the value of solid controls and staying in compliance. But all that good behavior comes with a real price.
After all, the time and energy spent on assessing and shoring up your processes isn’t cheap. And now, someone has finally put a price on it.
For the average smaller “non-accelerated” company to attain compliance with Sarbanes-Oxley’s Section 404, the first-year cost is over $78,000. That’s according to research done by the consulting firm of Lord & Benoit.
Even if your company isn’t required to be in compliance with Sarbox, those numbers are scary. Because Sarbox is widely used as the basis for other companies’ best practices.
Tags: Compliance, Cost control, Sarbox
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September 8th, 2008 at 7:52 pm
The $78,000 included the $25,000 audit fee. The audit fee was not an extra amount. Also keep in mind when broken out by segment, “market capitalization of these companies ranged from $19.7 million to $48 million. Revenues ranged from $1.5 million to $24.7 million. The companies typically had robust purchasing, multiple subsidiaries in the U.S. and overseas, inventory controls, complex IT systems and large capital expenditures. All of these factors contributed toward higher costs to perform their management assessment.” The full report can be read at http://www.section404.org