Treasury staffs' to-do lists are growing as they work to comply with Sarbanes-Oxley. The benefit down the road might be an enhanced role for treasurers within their organization.

Like most of his peers, Terry Endsley, vice president and treasurer of Navistar International Corp., has put in many long hours over the past 12 months working to ensure that his company fully complies with the mandates of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. Warrenville, Ill.-based Navistar, a holding company for commercial truck and diesel engine producer International Truck and Engine Corp., had effective controls in place long before the law was enacted, but the task of documenting those procedures has taken on a life of its own.

For example, Endsley estimates that Navistar's 25 treasury employees have spent a total of 1,000 hours learning to use new documentation software and working with internal auditors to ensure that the company's control procedures result in financial statements that accurately reflect its performance. It's a complex, ongoing process. "We are all going through a period of documentation and systemization that's going to be painful," reports Endsley.

For most organizations, a large part of the compliance pain is its cost. Data from The Hackett Group's 2004 Book of Numbers suggests that finance departments' increased spending on compliance activities is offsetting cost savings elsewhere within the function. While the cost of operating a finance department fell each year between 1992 and 2003, the declines have leveled off in recent years. Companies spent an average of 1.08 percent of their annual revenue on finance in 2004, down only slightly from 1.2 percent in 2000. One reason: Finance departments' annual compliance spending rose from 0.065 percent of overall revenue in 2000 to 0.09 percent in 2004.

Many treasury executives discern a silver lining in the Sarbanes-Oxley cloud, however. Down the road, they expect to leverage their compliance experience and expertise to expand their role within the organization.

These treasurers view Sarbanes-Oxley's impact on their department as a two-phase shift, according to Tom Morrison, vice president of product management with New York City-based information and technology applications provider Thomson Financial. For now, they are focusing on meeting the law's documentation requirements. "There's the short-term practicality of getting it done," he points out. However, as they bring that phase of their function's compliance effort under control, treasurers can start to take on a more proactive role within their company, he says.