Electronic Tie Out/Support Binder (Attachments)
Hello :) I'm looking to change our current paper tie out support binder to an electronic tie out support binder by using attachments.
1) Does anyone have any best practices or suggestions for me?
2) It looks like the attachments are ordered alphabetically. Do you add a number at the beginning of the attachment name to keep the attachments in the same order as your Q or K?
3) Is there an easy way to approve the tie outs without opening every attachment or see which tie outs have not been approved yet?
Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks!
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Hi Crystal, we use electronic support in attachments in WDesk. On your second question, in each section (usually divided by footnote in the financial statements or by section in other parts of the document) we do rename the support within WDesk to number them in order of how their appear in the document. On your third question, you can filter on the attachments pane by "locked" or "unlocked."
I don't know about best practices but we load our support for each number with tie-outs/tick marks and evidence of review and give both our internal and external auditors access to view the support within the WDesk document (without full edit access.) We also download PDFs of all sign-offs and supports at the end of the reporting period to save out on our shared drive. Hope that helps!
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Hi Amanda!
Thank you for the information. That is very helpful. Do you create a stamp for Prepared By and then another stamp for Reviewed By and then lock the attachment? That way the reviewer only needs to open and review unlocked attachments? Wanting to make this process as simple as possible for the reviewers and make it easy to tell which sections need to be reviewed.
Thanks again!
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Hi Crystal, I think that would be a good way to do it - we use the prepared by and reviewed by stamps but haven't been locking the attachment, we may start doing that though. If you did it that way, the reviewer could just filter on unlocked attachments.
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Amanda Taylor Crystal - we are setting up our tie out process from scratch this quarter and are using the digital tie out; I've also been looking for some best practices but haven't come across any so far.
1. We are updating the attachment names to be the reference # similar to how a paper tie out binder would be, i.e. income statement support = 1.1, 1.2, etc. - is this what you are doing as well?
2. Do you create 1 pdf at the end of the quarter with the pdf of the document with the reference labels, followed by all of the support attachments, and if so do you include W/P references on each page similar to the page numbering that may be in a paper tie out binder? OR Do you just export the support attachments as separate files with the reference #'s in the file name, and then export a separate PDF with the markup/attachment references for your tie out?
3. How do you handle the PY tie out / mathematical accuracy, do you add a separate attachment to document those were completed since we can't mark it up directly in the document right now?
4. Do you use the support binder at all or are you just doing all of this within the document?
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Hi Jessica,
1.) Yes that is what we do as well. If a data point is linking directly to a Workiva spreadsheet to our core system, we don't attach support - only if it is support that doesn't "live" in Workiva. We attach PDFs of the page/footnote/table with tick markets/review stamps at the beginning of the section and then order the support behind it. Sometimes it does get out of order, but it doesn't bother us much since most review is done within Workiva by clicking the actual attachment link on the number - we give our Internal Audit and External Audit team Workiva access.
2.) We just export all attachments and save them in our drive exactly how they export with a folder for each section.
3.) We upload an attachment to each section/footnote to document the PY tie-out- we usually do this before the quarter ends. I would love if we could print directly from WDesk into a support attachment, rather than exporting into PDF and uploading back into WDesk.
4.) No, we don't - just within the document.
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Hello all! I am also setting up the digital tie-out and I wanted to ask if you only import pdf supports. I have tried the new report package functionality but it doesn't work with excel files. I like the idea of one report package with the entire document followed by the supports.
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we decided to just attach the PDF version of support files, and for Excel file we just save or print it as a PDF and upload it as an attachment in that format. the Excel files display funny as attachments. we just share the Excel versions with our auditors and others as needed.
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