Corporate reporting types take note: There a several developments coming out of the Securities and Exchange Commission's Division of Corporation Finance that you'll want to watch for in the coming months.

Several items currently in the works should be of interest to financial statement preparers, including an update to the Financial Reporting Manual, Wayne Carnall, Chief Accountant in the SEC's Division of Corporation Finance, noted during a recent financial reporting conference.

The manual, which reflects the staff's view on various reporting issues, was updated for the first time in almost a decade and made publicly available on the SEC's Website for the first time ever in 2008. It has since been updated twice. Carnall said the next update is coming in early December.

Meanwhile, he noted that the staff is in the process of determining whether to incorporate its guidance and views from 25 years' worth of meetings with the Center for Audit Quality Regs Committee [previously the SEC Regs committee] into the Financial Reporting Manual.

"We're in the process of going through ... and looking at whether it's still relevant and should be included," he said during an update at a Financial Executives International conference this week. However, the information covers about 780 distinct issues, so that won't happen until the spring or summer of 2010.

Meanwhile, in response to concerns raised by some companies that including non-GAAP disclosures in their filings will result in a staff comment, Carnall said the staff is considering clarifications to some of its current guidance on the issue.

He said companies may be construing the guidance as more restrictive than intended.

"We are looking ... to determine if we should modify some of our interpretive guidance to make more clear what our expectations are," he said. "You can look for that to come sometime in near future."

Carnall also offered some suggestions for preparing upcoming 10-Ks. Among them: Try to make it more concise where possible. For instance, he said, "This is a great time to eliminate references to your accounting standards. Now that you have a nine-digit number, people don't know whether you're referring to an accounting standard or a nuclear launch code."

He also urged issuers to avoid redundancy in their disclosures and to write for investors, "not toward trying to avoid a comment."

Carnall advised preparers to look at the 10-K as a "disclosure and communication document," not a compliance document.

"Look at the information you're providing on your Website and in press releases," he said. "If it's material, I'd strongly encourage you to put into the 10-K."

Carnall plans to publish a PowerPoint on the SEC Website in December that was prepared for the 2009 Public Company Accounting Oversight Board forums for small-company auditors. While the presentation is geared toward non-accelerated filers, he said, "Even if you're a big business you'll find some use out of it ... so I'd encourage you to look at it." The staff will also soon publish a compilation of its most frequently issued comments to smaller banks.

Some of the areas where Carnall said the staff has issued a lot of comments this year include impairment of goodwill, accounting for income tax issues, liquidity, pension assumptions, aggregation, materiality, and other-than-temporary impairments.

In responding to a staff comment letter, Carnall urged companies to do it right the first time.

In other words, "Make your last response letter your first response letter," he said, observing that companies often send cursory responses to the staff, necessitating rounds of comment letters back and forth.

"Once they know it's coming to us or [the Office of the Chief Accountant] the response letter changes to very elaborate response," he said. "Had we received that final response the first time, there would've been no further questions."

He also encouraged executives to submit requests to the staff in writing by e-mail, which he said is more efficient and allows the staff to track some of the more common issues.