Oversight Systems Inc.

Oversight Systems Inc. has launched Oversight 3.0, which extends its transaction integrity monitoring solutions for the order-to-cash and financial accounting and reporting business processes. As a "virtual auditor," Oversight claims to continuously monitor 100 percent of the transactions and business activities in financial systems in real time to evaluate the compliance of every transaction and prevent losses associated with errors, misuse and fraud.

"Most executives aim to minimize their ongoing SOX compliance costs, but progressive companies recognize the potential to improve their businesses in the process," says Oversight Systems CEO Patrick Taylor. "Oversight automates the analysis and testing steps in an audit, which reduces Sarbanes Oxley monitoring and testing expenses. Oversight's real-time analysis prevents costly errors within procure-to-pay, order-to-cash and financial accounting & reporting processes."

For more than a year, Fortune 500 companies have relied on Oversight for real-time validation of their procure-to-pay transactions. The order-to-cash and financial accounting and reporting capabilities in Oversight 3.0 identify suspicious transactions and control exceptions, such as:

* Unauthorized discounts and credits

* Duplicate shipments

* Unauthorized write-offs for receivables

* Shipments without invoices

* Segregation of duties violations

* Duplicate journal entries

* Invalid journal entries to an account

In automating the testing and analysis of auditors and fraud examiners, Atlanta-based Oversight continuously monitors the business processes and all underlying transactions that drive financial reporting. The Oversight Controls Library links an organization's key risks and controls to specific audit tests. These tests, or integrity checks, encapsulate the best practices of auditors and fraud examiners, which are applied to every transaction.

Oversight captures and logs all activities, transactions and alerts in its Secure Audit Lockbox, which maintains a record of each step of every transaction Oversight delivers more than 100 packaged reports for compliance and day-to-day operational requirements. Users can also create their own customized reports using either the Oversight interface or third-party reporting tools.

Taylor said in an interview that the software, which can be installed as an appliance--saving IT time and headaches--uses artificial intelligence to scan for discrepancies and potential fraud. It is meant to approximate the capabilities of an auditor with three to four years of experience, he says, but can't handle more complicated judgment issues An example: whether the company was setting enough aside in bad-debt reserves.

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Taylor says the company began offering products last spring, and focuses on mid-sized to large organizations; the smallest company it is involved with has about $500 million in annual sales.

Web: www.oversighttech.com