TradeCard's New Sarbanes-Oxley Management Information Reports Provide Companies with Compliance Dashboard
Electronic platform's visibility facilitates complete transparency into trading activities

New York, September 29, 2003. TradeCard, the leading end-to-end financial supply chain service provider for global trade partners, has announced the availability of a series of reports that assists companies in complying with requirements of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act requires senior management to attest to the accuracy of their company's financial results, as well as to the effectiveness of the underlying internal controls and processes used to reach such results. TradeCard's new reports can assist companies in meeting these requirements by providing them with on-line visibility into their transactions conducted on the TradeCard Platform. Companies or their auditors can either log onto the TradeCard Platform to access these reports or receive them directly via email at a specified frequency.

The new reports provide both summary and detail information regarding a company's trading partners, products procured, cost of goods, payment information and an audit history of user signatures for those transactions executed on the TradeCard Platform. The first report is a high-level report that shows amounts paid to individual trading partners and the locations of those partners. The subsequent reports each provide supplementary levels of detail into the transactions that make up the summary report, allowing a company to drill down into more information on transactions with a specific vendor, including what line items were purchased, when and the cost of those items.

Companies involved in trade, particularly when dealing with international buyers or suppliers, face great complexities in their transactional business processes. Communication among the many parties involved in the trade is obstructed through manual handling of documents and processes, and data accuracy is hard to achieve if different parties work with documents at various stages of development. In this environment, accurate reporting and compliance are much harder to achieve. TradeCard enables companies to gain complete visibility into the entire trade process and ensures data accuracy in the financial supply chain by providing electronic documents that can be viewed by all necessary parties in real-time.

"Sarbanes-Oxley Act compliance doesn't stop with documentation of business processes and controls. You must actively enforce these policies and procedures, and technology can make it happen," said John Hagerty, Vice President Research in an AMR Research Outlook, September 15, 2003. In an April 2003 AMR Research Alert, Hagerty also stated that "the Sarbanes-Oxley Act doesn't have to be another federal mandate dragging down profits - forcing operations and finance to get a lot closer even in their daily execution and effort to improve visibility across the supply chain partners is a good thing. Companies that just see this as a reporting requirement will lose out. Companies that put together a supply chain risk management process with their partners will extract the biggest gain from their efforts."

The TradeCard Platform provides automated, configurable approval workflows with full visibility into the transactions to all parties involved. It also alerts users to important events such as payment decisions, credit line changes and payment delays ensuring users follow all required steps in the process.

"Our customers already benefit from the unique visibility and reporting functionality that the TradeCard Platform provides. To add reports that can assist them in achieving Sarbanes-Oxley compliance was a natural next step," commented Kurt Cavano, Chairman and CEO, TradeCard Inc. "These reports are especially useful in large multinational companies, where financial reporting typically has its roots deep in the supply chain and global offices add complexities to the process. By enabling the CEO, CFO and auditors to get a transparent view of financial transactions on a global scale, TradeCard gives them peace of mind."

About TradeCard
TradeCard Inc. is a privately held technology and services firm specializing in the emerging Financial Supply Chain (FSC) space. TradeCard is the leading end-to-end financial supply chain service provider that enables transparent commerce among global trade partners over an open, secure and neutral network. For the first time, buyers and sellers can manage transaction workflow with complete visibility into purchasing and financial transactions, from order to settlement, resulting in optimized cash flow and credit lines.

With TradeCard, global trading partners can realize unprecedented value from the financial supply chain including immediate cost savings, improved partner relationships and shortened trade cycles. TradeCard offers the most expansive network of extended trade services including export and vendor financing, payment assurance, money movement and inspection. This range of offerings makes TradeCard a proven alternative to traditional paper-based, expensive and labor-intensive trade settlement methods. Headquartered in New York City, TradeCard, Inc. has offices in the San Francisco Bay Area, Hong Kong, Brussels, Taipei, Seoul and Tokyo and Shenzhen. TradeCard is a registered trademark in the United States and elsewhere throughout the world. TradeCard is located online at www.tradecard.com.

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