Continuous auditing.

Oversight Systems Inc. has announced general availability of the 4.5 release of the company's continuous auditing software. Significant features of the new release include support for Windows Server 2003 and enhancements to the Oversight Workbench.

Oversight's Workbench supports the efficient evaluation and remediation of exceptions detected by the Collaborative Reasoning Engine (CoRE). The Workbench displays plain language descriptions of these potential problems, allowing users to drill down into the underlying transactional data to uncover and resolve every issue, from duplicate vendor information and invoices to likely fraud or misuse of funds.

The Workbench also includes automated workflow features that facilitate assignment of exceptions to the appropriate resources for efficient investigation and resolution; a Risk Profiler for creating and refining re-usable ad hoc queries that focus investigation and facilitate sophisticated data review; and a permanent investigative Log that automatically records all related activities, remediation and notes in a permanent journal.

With the 4.5 release, Workbench users can take advantage of a number of exception-handling enhancements, including:

* the ability to attach work papers and other files to specific exceptions;

* the ability to select a "reason code" for each exception. The reason code is supported in profiles, access control, reports, etc.;

* the ability to see correlations between different exception types; and

* accurate search- and profile-time estimations based on self-tuning actual/estimated time comparison algorithms.

Other enhancements in the 4.5 release include:

* Support for Oversight's server components to run on Microsoft Windows Server 2003;

* the incorporation of financial period filters derived from the original data source, to refine data extraction;

* additional pre-defined general ledger-related integrity checks, for enhanced fraud control.

Web: www.oversightsystems.com