All Accounting & Auditing articles – Page 96
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Article
Hosting a Related-Party Transaction About to Get Much Harder
Image: Companies preparing year-end financial disclosures, beware: Auditors will be poring over related-party transactions to make sure those parties don’t get too wild. The new Audit Standard 18 pushed auditors to be more skeptical about transactions, so expect them to push you (and your audit committee) to be more diligent ...
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Article
Hosting a Related-Party Transaction About to Get Much Harder
Image: Companies preparing year-end financial disclosures, beware: Auditors will be poring over related-party transactions to make sure those parties don’t get too wild. The new Audit Standard 18 pushed auditors to be more skeptical about transactions, so expect them to push you (and your audit committee) to be more diligent ...
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Blog
Countering the Effects of Unconscious Bias in Audits
Audits go wrong for many reasons, so let’s not deny one of them: because auditors sometimes unconsciously give the benefit of the doubt to a client when they should not. What unconscious biases put effective auditing at risk? How can an auditor train himself to find them, or construct practices ...
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Blog
COSO Expects First-Quarter Release of ERM Update Draft
Image: COSO expects to publish a draft of its Enterprise Risk Management Integrated Framework in the first quarter of 2016. First released more than a decade ago, COSO opted to make updates in light of modern business conventions and practices. COSO Chairman Bob Hirth says, “It will be ...
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Blog
PCAOB Issues Fresh Warnings on Risk
Image: The PCAOB has issued a report describing the deficiencies it sees in how audit firms implement and comply with risk assessment standards. “Because risk assessment underlies the entire audit process, it is critical that audit firms address these findings of weaknesses in compliance with the risk assessment standards,” said ...
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Blog
Pro Forma Reporting Tasked in Brisk M&A Market
A robust M&A market along with pro forma financial reporting rules have made it challenging for companies to comply with reporting requirements. New guidance from EY is meant to help companies know what pro forma financial information to present in SEC filings, which SEC forms require pro forma financial information, ...
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Article
Year-End Audits: Start Prepping for the Pain
As public companies and their external auditors gear up for the year-end audit cycle, it will likely include some familiar, yet still uncomfortable, conversations. Be ready for close looks at internal control over financial reporting, accounting estimates, and related-party transactions. “You can rest assured auditors are going to be really ...
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Blog
CAQ Echoes Regulatory Warnings for Year-End Audits
Image: The Center for Audit Quality has issued an alert to auditors advising where they should focus their audit attention this year. First up is professional skepticism and internal control over financial reporting, followed closely by risk assessments, cyber-security, revenue recognition, and related parties. “These alerts reflect the public company ...
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Blog
Calcbench to Provide XBRL based Financial Data to SEC Analysts
The Security and Exchange Commission has selected financial data provider Calcbench, through a competitive bid, to deliver subscription services to the agency. The award will allow a significant number of the SEC’s analysts to have access to Calcbench’s financial analytics platform, powered by eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL). More inside.
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Blog
More Data Show Audit Fees Rising for Public Companies
A recent study from Financial Executives International of 7,000 public companies revealed that 20.6 percent reported ineffective internal controls over financial reporting, and the median audit fee increase for those companies was 3 percentage points higher than for public companies as a whole. The companies cited two primary reasons for ...
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Blog
OECD Measures Would Tie Off International Tax Loopholes
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development has offered the G-20 nations measures intended to plug the holes that let companies engage in offshore tax planning that reduces the total global tax base. The package includes minimum standards to thwart the use of conduit companies to channel investments. It also ...
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Article
Frustrating Risk With the Right Internal Control Framework
Image: As cyber-security and IT controls rise up the priority list in corporate audits, a new wrinkle is emerging: numerous frameworks (COSO, NIST, CoBIT) used by numerous parties, all trying to build effective control systems. That could lead to painful detours in mapping controls, if compliance executives don’t plan carefully. ...
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Blog
Companies Meet Their Match in Cyber-Security, IT Survey Shows
Image: A recent survey from Protiviti found that only 28 percent of 700 senior IT managers saw a high level of engagement and understanding of cyber-security risks by the board of directors. According to the company, board members are trying to understand complex technical issues, the investments necessary to address ...
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Blog
SEC Charges Grant Thornton Affiliates for Auditor Independence
The Securities and Exchange Commission has charged two Grant Thornton affiliates in India and Australia with violating auditor independence rules based on their activities in the tiny island nation of Mauritius off the east coast of Africa.
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Blog
PCAOB Lays Bare Its 2015 Inspection Strategy
Image: The PCAOB has published a staff inspection brief mandating that inspectors scrutinize the audit of internal control over financial reporting, the auditor assessment of (and response to) risks of material misstatements, and the audit of accounting estimates. “We hope that audit firms and other stakeholders find this information about ...
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Blog
FASB Proposes More Changes to Revenue Standard
FASB is asking for feedback by Nov. 16 on its planned fixes to the revenue recognition standard to address implementation challenges around collectibility, taxes, non-cash consideration, contract modifications, and other technical issues. The board says its proposed amendments should reduce the degree of judgment necessary to apply the new revenue ...
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Blog
FASB Simplifies Business Combinations Accounting
FASB has approved a change that simplifies accounting for business combinations, so companies will no longer be required to make retrospective adjustments to historical data as if the facts of the acquired unit had been known from the date of the acquisition. Instead, the acquiring company will recognize adjustments to ...
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Article
SEC Accounting Enforcement: Bigger and Badder
Image: Perhaps some public companies haven’t yet taken to heart the (numerous) signals from regulators to button up their internal controls. A recent legal analysis of accounting-related enforcement actions from the SEC should do the trick. Sanctions are happening more frequently, and penalties are bigger. “The SEC is effectively ...
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Blog
eOriginal Launches Real-Time Auditing and Compliance Solution for Financial Services Firms
eOriginal, a digital transaction management solutions provider, announced the launch of Datalytics, a new real-time asset-level auditing and compliance solution for the financial services industry. Datalytics provides analysis, monitoring, and reporting of origination data for faster audit request response and to prevent errors and re-submissions. More inside.
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Blog
FASB Proposes Aligning Guidance on Materiality
Image: FASB has issued two new exposure drafts—one to help firms use discretion when deciding which footnote disclosures should be considered material; the other to clarify the concept of materiality for standard-setting purposes. The proposals are intended to help organizations improve the effectiveness of their disclosures by steering them away ...