AMES, Iowa--(BUSINESS WIRE)--
Workiva (NYSE:WK), a leading provider of enterprise cloud solutions for improving productivity, accountability and insight into business data, announces that Shopify saves time by using the Wdesk platform to manage internal controls over financial reporting as required by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX).
“Prior to using Wdesk, our SOX process was spread among multiple spreadsheets, and each spreadsheet was subject to multiple iterations,” said Jennifer Beckert, Senior Accountant at Shopify, which helps merchants set up online stores. “We had a great experience using Wdesk for SEC reporting, so I turned to Workiva for help with SOX.”
“With Wdesk, I can now identify and prevent problems earlier than before,” she said. “It has freed me up to think more analytically.”
With Wdesk, Beckert and her team linked their SOX risk-control matrix, process narratives and flowcharts, which streamlined how they manage, monitor and test internal controls. Wdesk also provides a full audit trail, with a feature that allows users to mark blacklines along the way to easily compare revisions.
“The Wdesk blackline feature is one of my favorite things,” added Beckert. “I had to prepare a document that required me to compare 2014 and 2015 changes. When the older documents were not in Wdesk, the report took me half a day. Now that everything is in Wdesk, it takes me seconds to compare. It’s as simple as a click.”
Wdesk linking technology synchronizes documents and ensures that Shopify’s internal and external teams and auditors are working on the most current and accurate version. Accuracy is extremely important in SOX compliance because an external auditor must attest to, and report on, management’s assessment of its internal controls. With Wdesk dashboards, external auditors can track if internal-controls tests are in process or completed.
“With Wdesk, we are working in real time,” Beckert said. “Everything comes in, we have it all there, and we're not waiting and panicking leading up to deadlines. I don't feel the pressure.”
“Shopify’s vision is to be a 100-year company,” Beckert said. “So we’re looking for solutions, like Wdesk, that solve problems forever.”
About Workiva
Workiva (NYSE:WK) created Wdesk, a cloud-based productivity platform for enterprises to collect, link, report and analyze business data with control and accountability. Thousands of organizations, including over 65 percent of the Fortune 500®, use Wdesk. The platform’s proprietary word processing, spreadsheet and presentation applications are integrated and built upon a data management engine, offering synchronized data, controlled collaboration, granular permissions and a full audit trail. Wdesk helps mitigate enterprise risk, improve productivity and give users confidence to make decisions with real-time data. Workiva employs more than 1,200 people with offices in 16 cities. The company is headquartered in Ames, Iowa. For more information, visit workiva.com.
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