[CPA788]

Hi ya’ll,
I’ve been at a public company for ~4 years part of closing financials. There isn’t a ton of upward mobility really unless someone retires/leaves/etc. That actually happened recently and what I got out of it was a lateral movement to a more specialized role (which I do like). I do want to manage eventually, but didn’t get any public experience at any B4.

A SOX compliance role has recently come available that I applied for but I’m nervous that I’ll hate it. I love the big data I currently have to pull apart, love Excel, and analyzing the work I do to make sure my JEs are correct – but I am sick of the month end grind. I love the thought of being part of implementing something big for the company and working with more departments/people – I’m for sure a people person. But I have to leave everything I know in finance and jump to IT. Position does report to a CPA.

Anyone out there that can give me any insight to SOX experience and maybe if you’ve had experience in both positions? Am I making the right move if I get offered the gig? Thanks all.

BEC - 74, 77
FAR - 72, 71 (retake 7/29)
REG - 69
AUD - Q4 '16

CA Candidate

[refinnej]

Not sure what it entails but the compliance part of auditing is the most boring in my opinion. If it's anything like that then I'm thinking it might not be great. CAn you shadow someone one day or check out a SOX employees workpapers?

BEC - PASSED
REG - PASSED
AUD - PASSED
FAR - Not scheduled yet

[Anonymous]

I have worked in internal audit and spent about a year doing compliance work. Lets just say I quickly went back to public accounting. Compliance work was the worst for me. You basically are just checking to see if they are doing what they should be doing in terms of policies and procedures. I did internal audit work before where I did financial and operational work and then we would do some SOX work here and there. Some people loved it. I was bored to death and hated going to work. But then again every role is different. SOX work can be very monotonous.

[CPA788]

If it makes a difference in opinion, the role will be heavy on 404 implementation. That's why I found it more interesting than the usual compliance position. Everything is being built from the ground up at this point so it seems sorta fun to be part of a team that currently only has a manager. Am I still crazy? If anything I feel like the experience for my resume might be worth a year of it?

BEC - 74, 77
FAR - 72, 71 (retake 7/29)
REG - 69
AUD - Q4 '16

CA Candidate

[Skynet]

Go with the Red SOX's. The team is loaded for the future. The White Sox's just SUCK period!

[MaLoTu]

I am in public auditing. I enjoy SOX work. I have done both sides, where we are the external auditor testing another firms work (where they are acting as the IA) and where we are the consultants working as the company's IA function.

If you go into a pure SOX position you are not going to get a lot of accounting exposure. You will learn the ins and outs of an organization. So, basically what you will be doing is, as a team, you will help the company with their narrative, which is describing what the company does for several processes. This narrative will call out controls. You will have to figure out a way to validate that the control is working. So, if it is AP, one control might be that a PO of a certain amount has a signature by X person and over a certain amount needs 2 signatures. You pull samples and verify that those POs do in fact have the signatures. There are many more items that you would be testing, but that is the gist of it.

It can be really hard to get the support you need to test the controls and it is even worse when their control fails. If you want real applicable skills then you should go into auditing. SOX would set you up for internal audit in the future, but I am not sure what else. If you work for a public company then you should have an idea of what SOX auditors do.

[CPA788]

Thanks guys. I have interviews Monday. I'll have the weekend to do some more research and think about it. I'm interviewing with people in my department so hopefully I can get some real talk about the switch from them.

BEC - 74, 77
FAR - 72, 71 (retake 7/29)
REG - 69
AUD - Q4 '16

CA Candidate

[Author]

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