All Accounting & Auditing articles – Page 92
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Blog
Monitoring Gifting Policies During the Holiday Season
The holiday season is always a good time to remind employees about gifts and hospitality rules. The general messages are clear: Follow the rules; use good judgment; seek help if you aren’t sure what to do; and never do something that doesn’t feel right. This week, columnist Jose Tabuena suggests ...
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Blog
PCAOB Experiments With Random Inspections, Data Analysis
Image: The PCAOB has opened a project to study inspection results statistically and to consider whether the board should allocate some inspection resources to randomly selected audits. Chairman James Doty: “Could some randomization help us make better inferences about how pervasive audit deficiencies may be? Could some random selection increase ...
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Blog
FASB Seats Transition Group for Impairment, Not Leases
Image: Building on the success of the revenue recognition transition group, FASB is planning a new group to facilitate implementation of the pending financial instrument impairment standard. In recent remarks, FASB Chairman Russ Golden said the TRG has already met to identify any key issues. The board is putting the ...
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SEC Looks for Disclosures, Consistency in Revenue Rule; May Offer Guidance
Image: Companies that can’t say by year’s end how they will be affected by the new revenue standard should let investors know when they will have it sorted out. SEC Deputy Chief Accountant Wesley Bricker said recently, “As companies prepare their annual financial statements over the next couple of months, ...
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Regulators Continue Full Throttle on Internal Controls
Image: SEC Chief Accountant Jim Schnurr is encouraging preparers to communicate more with auditors and consider that tensions might be escalating because their controls aren’t up to snuff. “The ICFR issues identified by the PCAOB may not be just a problem of audit execution,” Schnurr said. “Rather, they may, at ...
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Blog
SEC to Consider Staff Proposal on IFRS
Image: The SEC is considering making amendments to rules that would give domestic issuers the chance to provide IFRS-based information as a supplement to U.S. GAAP financial statements. At a recent conference, SEC Chair Mary Jo White said, “The staff has now developed a recommendation for the Commission’s consideration, which ...
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Article
The Popularity, and Peril, of Structured Payable Programs
Image: Structured payable programs have become increasingly popular in recent years as companies and their lenders search for new ways to access working capital. But according to Robert Rostan, CFO and principal at education firm Training The Street, such arrangements could turn short-term accounts payable into longer-term debt that requires ...
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FASB Tests Materiality Ideas With Fair-Value Disclosure Proposal
As part of its effort to improve disclosure requirements, FASB is proposing new disclosure provisions around fair-value measurements to make fair-value disclosures more meaningful to investors. The proposal says entities would provide required disclosures if they are material, and would remove phrases such as “an entity shall disclose at a ...
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IT Audit Executives Struggle With Pace of Change, Survey Shows
Image: Rapid innovation, disruption, and growth in cyber-security risks are the biggest technology challenges for IT auditors, a survey from ISACA and Protiviti says. Managing Director David Brand says, “IT audit professionals have recognized the need to grow their knowledge and expertise while also updating their policies, processes, people, and ...
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Blog
SEC Charges Grant Thornton, Two Partners
The SEC delivered a heavy blow to Grant Thornton and two of its engagement partners last week with charges they ignored red flags and fraud risks at two public companies that ultimately faced enforcement actions of their own. Grant Thornton agreed to a penalty of $3 million, forfeited $1.5 million ...
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Blog
PwC Reports on Efforts to Raise Audit Quality
Image: PwC has issued a report to answer questions about what it is doing to better address regulatory demands for better audits. The company is investing in technology, developing talent, and adjusting its audit approach to meet rising expectations. “We understand the importance of maintaining our focus on delivering quality, ...
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Internal Audit Needs to Better Measure Performance, IIA Says
Internal audit departments might better demonstrate the value they bring to public companies if they had a more robust way of measuring their own performance.
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Article
Amid Financial Reporting Changes, SEC Offers Cautions
With changes looming on accounting standards for revenue recognition, leases, financial instruments, and more, skittish corporate accountants often turn to the SEC’s Division of Corporation Finance and staff accountants, relying on phone briefings and pre-clearing consultations to get ahead of financial reporting issues before they result in an SEC comment ...
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Article
Little to Fear in New World of Lease Accounting
Accounting for leases is about to undergo a profound change, thanks to a new standard adopted by accounting rulemakers in the United States and overseas. The new standard has its critics; in a special guest column this week, Gary Kabureck—former chief accounting officer of Xerox, now a member of the ...
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The Technology Transforming Your Annual Audit
Image: The audit profession is slowly retooling itself for the modern IT age, after decades of reliance on random sampling and manual methods that now fail to meet today’s expectations for precision. “Ultimately, this is how the industry will finally achieve its long-term goal of continuous auditing,” says Joanna Schultz ...
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Blog
PCAOB Nears New Rule on Naming Engagement Partners
Image: PCAOB Chairman James Doty believes the board will be in a position “very soon” to finalize a rule requiring audit firms to submit a new form, Form AP, to the PCAOB naming engagement partners and other accounting firms that contribute to the final audit opinion for public companies. Doty ...
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Blog
FASB Proposes Changes to Business Definition
FASB is proposing some clarifications to how a business is defined, to help companies following accounting rules related to acquisitions, disposals, goodwill, and consolidation. The board says stakeholders have reported that applying the current definition, as spelled out in U.S. Generally Accepted Accounting Principles, sweeps in transactions that don’t really ...
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How to Panic Effectively With So Many Effective Dates Coming
Image: Revenue recognition, leasing, financial instruments—the accounting standards for all three have major changes looming, and that means financial reporting executives have lots of implementation to juggle in a short period. This week we look at how to manage so much change well and which companies face the most work. ...
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Blog
Compliance Versus ERM
Compliance programs need to be part of comprehensive enterprise risk management, yes, but ERM does not displace the roles of internal audit and the compliance program. This week, columnist Jose Tabuena discusses risk management as a distinct discipline that auditors and compliance officers can work with. He describes the resources ...
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Defining a Material Issue
You see the sentence all the time: “The provisions of this Codification need not be applied to immaterial items.” Those 12 simple words, while universally understood to mean “don’t include unimportant things in financial statements,” are still relatively unclear. In fact, applying the concept of materiality to accounting has gotten ...