[Pete]

If you guys had a chance, could you critique my BEC essay for Becker? I have my exam in 1 week. I’m trying to convince the CFO to adoubt section 404 for his non-issuer company. I’ve put my essay below.

The purpose of this memo is to discuss the benefits of voluntarily adopting section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxly Act, known as SAR. In general, this act requires management to asses internal controls and attest to those controls operating correctly. In addition, this act requires that the internal controls by audited by an external auditor.

Adoption of this section section of SAR will better enable your organization to go public, if the need ever rises; this is one of the many requirements of public companies. By ensuring that you and an external auditor attest to the internal controls, you will have one less requirement, which you must integrate, when the desire to go public arises.

In addition, internal controls help ensure that material mistakes are avoided, thus helping to ensure the accuracy of the financial statements. By assessing these controls and placing emphasis on them, you’re increasing the odds that they’re working as designed. Since the odds of having strong financial controls increase with the assessment of them, your risk of material misstatement will decrease.

With less chance of a material misstatement, audit fees will likely decrease because the auditor will need to perform less work. As the chance of material misstatement in an organization decreases, the required audit work declines. In other-words, audit work is directly proportional to the risk of material misstatement.

From the three reasons listed above, amongst many other reasons, you should strongly consider voluntarily complying with section 404.

If you have any questions, please call when it is convenient for you.

B=84 This exam was such a b**** that I thought I failed-don't know how these things work
A=76 Slacker I am, I'll happily take it
R=81 I LOVE taxes
F=80 I don't wanna get banned for an expletive I'm thinking with "yea" proceeding it

[Larry]

That's impressive. I only wrote 1-2 sentence with a few buzz words per paragraph. I hope it was good enough.

AUD - 83
BEC - 76
FAR - 78
REG - 82

Licensed in Florida

REG - 82
FAR - 78
BEC - 76
AUD - 8/27/16

[Pete]

Eh, on actual exam day, I expect to write half that much. Under pressure, I doubt I will manage half of that length. Also, that took 20 minutes to write. Usually, my essays are completely different than the Becker ones, which hopefully isn't bad.

B=84 This exam was such a b**** that I thought I failed-don't know how these things work
A=76 Slacker I am, I'll happily take it
R=81 I LOVE taxes
F=80 I don't wanna get banned for an expletive I'm thinking with "yea" proceeding it

[Author]

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