All Accounting & Auditing articles – Page 104
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Resource
Compliance Week Audit Information Survey
Download the results from Compliance Week’s survey of chief compliance officers and chief audit executives, asking them what information they present to the audit committee about audit firm engagements.
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Blog
What You Tell the Audit Committee About Auditors
Image: You might have forgotten, but once upon a time a company’s audit committee was primarily responsible for—get this—the annual audit. Compliance Week recently surveyed compliance and audit executives to ask: What information do you bring to the audit committee when reviewing the performance of your audit firm? Inside, Editor ...
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Blog
FASB Proposes Targeted New Derivative Disclosures
FASB has issued a proposed update to accounting standards, with new disclosure requirements for financial instruments that contain separately presented embedded derivatives. Companies would be required to disclose the carrying amount, measurement attribute, and line item in both the balance sheet and income statement under certain circumstances.
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Blog
Survey: Audit Execs’ Cyber-Fears Run Deep
Image: Nearly 7 in 10 internal audit leaders participating in the IIA’s annual “Pulse of Internal Audit” survey ranked cyber-attacks and other security issues as a major concern, but only about one-third said they have high confidence in their organizations’ ability to address such risks. IIA President Richard Chambers says ...
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Blog
Shareholder Wins Bid to Amend Audit Committee Rules
A recent letter from the Securities and Exchange Commission denies Citigroup’s proposal to bar a person with a history of bankruptcy from joining the audit committee. The Commission said it disagrees with Citi that a shareholder proposal to pursue a bylaw amendment on audit committee service should be excluded from ...
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Article
Where Internal Audit Can Help in Cyber-Security
Image: With yet another huge data breach hitting Corporate America—add insurance giant Anthem to the Hall of Shame—internal audit departments are trying to pinpoint what expertise they can bring to the company’s cyber-security risk assessment. Plenty, many audit executives say. “There are technical aspects of these projects, but regardless of ...
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Blog
Escalation Processes to Avoid Personal CCO Liability
Compliance officers have become targets for regulators because of what they (presumably) know and advise about regulatory requirements—including their role in identifying and reporting of violations. Now compliance officers face personal liability even for failure to act, rather than any direct violation. This week, Compliance Week columnist Jose Tabuena explains ...
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Blog
Novaworks to Provide No-Cost XBRL Data Review
With the Securities and Exchange Commission applying increased pressure on publicly traded companies to enforce data-quality standards, Novaworks, a provider of SEC filing software, announced last week it will conduct XBRL no cost, data-quality reviews to ensure companies' annual reports are accurate and error-free. Details inside.
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Blog
Un-Convergence? Auditors Fret Over Possible Changes to Revenue Rule
Auditors are starting to worry about the implications of changes to the sweeping new standard on revenue recognition if U.S. and international rulemakers start debating new views and reaching different conclusions. Although both boards agreed in a recent joint meeting to consider changes, they didn’t agree on what those changes ...
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Blog
FASB Finalizes New Consolidation Guidance
Image: The Financial Accounting Standards Board has finished some targeted improvements to the accounting requirements around consolidations, or the rules around when a company must add another entity to its financial statements because it controls the business. “This new standard simplifies consolidation accounting by reducing the number of consolidation models, ...
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Article
Dueling Thresholds Emerge on Going-Concern Warnings
Image: A new accounting standard meant to give investors more warning of when a company is in trouble could actually lead to less warning of trouble. Audit and accounting professionals are struggling over conflicting interpretations of “substantial doubt,” and the answer is not easy. “I’m not sure if the standard ...
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Article
When Revenue Recognition and Executive Pay Collide
Image: The impending new accounting standard for revenue recognition already has corporate accountants buzzing; now compensation committees should brace for impact. The standard redefines a host of terms under the heading of “revenue,” and that will affect pay plans. “To the extent executive compensation is triggered by company performance … ...
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Blog
New Ideas on Disclosure Reform
Disclosure reform is one of the more intractable problems of corporate reporting. The SEC says it will work to move that issue forward this year, and inside, Compliance Week columnist Robert Herz offers his view on how to reinvigorate that project: Aim for a system of one corporate “evergreen” file ...
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Blog
FASB, IASB Staff Call for Changes to Revenue Rules
Staff members of both the U.S. and international accounting rulemakers are recommending that their boards re-open their massive joint standard on revenue recognition to answer specific questions around implementation. The Joint Transition Resource Group has fielded nearly 40 issues that companies have encountered; FASB began to consider possible changes this ...
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Blog
AICPA Offers Advice for Conflict Minerals Audits
The AICPA has published new guidance for conducting independent audits of companies asserting that their products are conflict-minerals free. Published in Q&A form, the guidance addresses the representation letters auditors should obtain from management as they review conflict- minerals reports.
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Blog
Survey: Cyber-Risk Is Big, but Regulatory Risk Trumps Again
Image: In a recent poll by Protiviti and North Carolina State University of 277 board members and top executives, 67 percent identified regulatory risk as the top concern for the third time since the survey began. Protiviti managing director Jim DeLoach says, “The fact that this is so top of ...
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Blog
Shake-up in T&E Providers Leads Companies to New Solutions
Image: Big changes for expense management system providers, such as the acquisition of Concur Technologies by SAP and the earlier IBM move of cutting its Global Expense Reporting Solutions as a standalone product, has led to more business for up-and-comers like Chrome River. Chrome cofounder Alan Rich says, “The companies ...
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Article
What Critics Say on Three Lines of Defense
The Three Lines of Defense model for risk oversight—business units in the first line, compliance in the second, internal auditors in the third—has been hugely popular in recent years. Proponents love it, and regulators have come to expect it. Critics, however, say the Three Lines model is too simplistic a ...
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Article
The Slog Begins for New Revenue Standard
Image: FASB’s effort to implement its new standard for revenue recognition by 2017 is bumping against business reality, as different parts of Corporate America grow vocal about their ability—or lack thereof—to manage the task. “A lot of companies are trying to correlate the messaging around a potential deferral and potential ...
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Blog
Study: Companies Taking Own Action on Clawbacks
Even ahead of any new clawback rules mandated by Congress or the SEC, companies are moving ahead themselves to add clawback provisions to executive compensation arrangements—and are swallowing some added accounting and financial reporting complexity to do so. PwC recently analyzed 100 large public companies and found 40 percent of ...