Page 231 - MANUAL OF SOP

Manual of OP for Trade Remedy Investigations

the financial statement, the team must ensure that they possess the
audited financial statement for the POI and the previous financial
period. During the accounting review, the team should:

• Ask for an explanation of the internal accounting system
which describes how, when and where the financial and
sales accounting systems tie together. While verifying the
factors of production, look for how the production and/or
inventory accounting system ties to the financial records.
Given the limited time of verification, focus on the essential
and relevant information for verification.
• The team should verify financial statements submitted in a
response and contents thereof, against the original audited
financial statement. If the Respondent has failed to file
financial statements for affiliate companies along with their
questionnaires responses, they should be asked to do the
needful during verification.

Computer Database Review
(xliv) Most businesses involved in international trade today maintain much of
their basic sale and costs records and formal accounts in electronic form
using some form of integrated accounting software. Therefore, much of the
response material can be directly procured from the on-line documentation
maintained by the respective company. In some cases, no hard copies
of typical accounting source documents are kept. Therefore, for most
companies, team members will need to scrutinize the integrity of the
computer databases in order to complete the verification. Below are some
useful tips for such verifications. (Note that some of these documents may
have been submitted as part of the questionnaire responses or in a separate
filing prior to verification):

(a) Investigation Team should ask to meet with the person in charge of
computer operations and have this person provide a complete list
of the types of computer reports generated and/or available in the
ordinary course of business.

(b) Team members should review samples of the computer-generated
reports and select those that could be of interest during the

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