INSURANCE AND FINANCIAL services planners be warned: If your
internal auditing department hasn't yet taken an interest in
your meeting spend documentation, it's only a matter of time.
That's because section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act — a bill
enacted in 2002 to increase corporate responsibility and curtail
accounting scandals — recently became law for some large public
companies.  The upshot of SOX section 404, says David Kaufman, a
partner in New York — based Acquis Consulting Group and speaker
at the 2004 ICPA Annual Meeting in November, is that planners
will need to show not just that numbers are correct, but that
processes are audited and controlled.  Kaufman should know: He
is a former auditor who for the past 10 years has been working
with large and mid-sized companies in the areas of strategy,
process improvement, and cost reduction, with a specialization
in corporate travel and meetings. His standing-room-only seminar
created quite the buzz with ICPA attendees, about 40 percent of
whom were with co