Item 4. Controls and Procedures
ITEM 4. CONTROLS AND PROCEDURES
(a) Evaluation of Disclosure Controls and Procedures
We maintain disclosure controls and procedures that are designed to ensure that information required to be disclosed in our Exchange Act reports is recorded, processed, summarized and reported within the time periods specified in the Securities and Exchange Commission’s rules and forms and that such information is accumulated and communicated to our Chief Executive Officer and Chief Financial Officer, as appropriate, to allow for timely decisions regarding required disclosure. In designing and evaluating the disclosure controls and procedures, management recognizes that any controls and procedures, no matter how well designed and operated, can provide only reasonable assurance of achieving the desired control objectives, and management is required to apply its judgment in evaluating the cost-benefit relationship of possible controls and procedures. Our disclosure controls and procedures were designed to provide reasonable assurance that the controls and procedures would meet their objectives. As required by SEC Rule 13a-15(b), our Chief Executive Officer and Chief Financial Officer carried out an evaluation of the effectiveness of the design and operation of our disclosure controls and procedures as of the end of the period covered by this report. Based on the foregoing, our Chief Executive Officer and Chief Financial Officer concluded that our disclosure controls and procedures were not effective for the three months ended September 30, 2013 mainly due to lack of segregation of duties.
In the interim period, to mitigate the current limited resources and limited employees, we rely heavily on direct management oversight of transactions, along with the use of external legal and accounting professionals. As we grow, we expect to create a new finance and accounting position that will allow for proper segregation of duties consistent with control objectives, and will increase our personnel resources and technical accounting expertise within the accounting function. As our financing staff grows we will prepare and implement appropriate written policies and checklists which set forth procedures for accounting and financial reporting with respect to the duties within the internal control framework. These current control deficiencies could result in a misstatement of account balances that would result in a reasonable possibility that a material misstatement to our consolidated financial statements may not be prevented or detected on a timely basis. Accordingly, we have determined that these control deficiencies as described above together constitute a material weakness.
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(b) Limitations on Effectiveness of Controls and Procedures
Our management, including our chief executive officer, does not expect that our disclosure controls and procedures or our internal controls will prevent all error and all fraud. A control system, no matter how well conceived and operated, can provide only reasonable, not absolute, assurance that the objectives of the control system are met. Further, the design of a control system must reflect the fact that there are resource constraints and the benefits of controls must be considered relative to their costs. Because of the inherent limitations in all control systems, no evaluation of controls can provide absolute assurance that all control issues and instances of fraud, if any, within our company have been detected. These inherent limitations include, but are not limited to, the realities that judgments in decision-making can be faulty and that breakdowns can occur because of simple error or mistake. Additionally, controls can be circumvented by the individual acts of some persons, by collusion of two or more people, or by management override of the control. The design of any system of controls also is based in part upon certain assumptions about the likelihood of future events and there can be no assurance that any design will succeed in achieving its stated goals under all potential future conditions; over time, control may become inadequate because of changes in conditions, or the degree of compliance with the policies or procedures may deteriorate.
Management has identified control deficiencies regarding the lack of segregation of duties and the need for a stronger internal control environment. Our management believes that these material weaknesses are due to the small size of our accounting staff. The small size of our accounting staff may prevent adequate controls in the future, such as segregation of duties, due to the high cost of such remediation relative the benefit expected to be derived thereby.
In the interim period, to mitigate the current limited resources and limited employees, we rely heavily on direct management oversight of transactions, along with the use of external legal and accounting professionals. As we grow, we expect to create a new finance and accounting position that will allow for proper segregation of duties consistent with control objectives, and will increase our personnel resources and technical accounting expertise within the accounting function. As our financing staff grows we will prepare and implement appropriate written policies and checklists which set forth procedures for accounting and financial reporting with respect to the duties within the internal control framework. These current control deficiencies could result in a misstatement of account balances that would result in a reasonable possibility that a material misstatement to our consolidated financial statements may not be prevented or detected on a timely basis. Accordingly, we have determined that these control deficiencies as described above together constitute a material weakness.
It should be noted that any system of controls, however well designed and operated, can provide only reasonable and not absolute assurance that the objectives of the system are met. In addition, the design of any control system is based in part upon certain assumptions about the likelihood of certain events. Because of these and other inherent limitations of control systems, there can be no assurance that any design will succeed in achieving its stated goals under all potential future conditions, regardless of how remote.
(c) Changes in Internal Control Over Financial Reporting
During the three months ended September 30, 2013, there were no changes in our internal control over financial reporting that have materially affected, or are reasonably likely to materially affect, our internal control over financial reporting.
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PART II – OTHER INFORMATION
Text extracted from the filing as submitted to EDGAR. Formatting, tables and exhibits are simplified for reading; the original document is authoritative for anything you rely on.