All Accounting & Auditing articles – Page 94
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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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Blog
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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Article
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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Article
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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Blog
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 ...
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Blog
FASB Drops Deferred Tax Classification Requirement
Companies seeking an easier way to classify deferred taxes on the balance sheet have gotten their way: FASB has eliminated that requirement, as part of its effort to simplify accounting standards. The change to accounting rules now makes U.S. GAAP requirements more consistent with those in International Financial Reporting Standards. ...
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Blog
PCAOB Explores Tension Over Internal Control Audits
Image: The PCAOB apparently is taking seriously complaints that its inspection process is driving unnecessary audit work. At a recent conference, PCAOB member Jay Hanson said the board has studied its inspection process to assure that inspections are not imposing new audit requirements. Still, he said, “we cannot rule out” ...
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Blog
Inspection Results Vary Even Within Global Networks, PCAOB Member Says
Image: Global affiliates of the six largest accounting firms turn in strikingly different inspection results compared with their U.S. affiliates. PCAOB research shows. Deloitte U.S., for example, has been reducing the rate of deficiencies in its inspections from 2011 through 2013, but Deloitte’s global affiliates have turned in much higher ...
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Blog
Study: Energy Sector Behind Spike in Goodwill Impairments
A TEXT released this week by Duff & Phelps finds that U.S. companies recorded $26 billion of goodwill impairment, an 18 percent increase from $22 billion in 2013. The increase was largely driven by oil and gas companies. The survey also uncovered a pronounced uptick in public companies’ use of ...
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Blog
Early 2015 Inspection Results Hint to Some Improvements
Image: PCAOB Chairman Jim Doty met recently with FASB’s Standing Advisory Group to provide an early look at 2015 inspection results. “Overall early results indicate that the number of deficiencies identified in the engagements inspected appears to be declining from the 2014 inspections results,” he said. “These results vary for ...
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Article
FASB Ideas on Materiality Reform Draw Heat, Questions
Image: An effort to align the accounting world’s definition of materiality with how the idea is widely understood in legal circles is sparking a fierce debate in corporate accounting circles, with potentially big consequences for financial reporting. “More information or more disclosure is better than less, in general,” said Damon ...
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Blog
Hall & Company CPAs Appoints Director of Audit Services
Hall & Company CPAs has named C. Wendell Daniel as director of audit services. Daniel joins the tax, accounting and business consulting firm with a broad range of audit and accounting expertise, including in the areas of mergers and acquisitions, IPOs, succession/exit planning, capital and debt raise transactions, and attestation ...
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Blog
Netwrix Auditor Upgraded to Support Security Investigations
Netwrix, a provider of IT auditing software that delivers complete visibility into IT infrastructure changes and data access, has announced the release of Netwrix Auditor 7.1. The new version simplifies investigation of past incidents and provides a complete audit trail for compliance audits. It also supports NetApp Clustered Data ONTAP ...
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Blog
Haskell & White Hires Senior Audit Manager
Haskell & White, an accounting, auditing and tax consulting firms, has hired Hogi Kurniawan as a senior manager in the audit and business advisory services department. Details inside.
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Blog
FASB Sets Dates for Financial Instruments Standards
In addition to finalizing and setting a 2019 effective date for a new standard on leasing accounting, FASB has wrapped up its long-running work on changes to the way companies will classify and measure financial instruments and has directed its staff to prepare the final language of the Accounting Standards ...