Business & Industry / E-Commerce
The Internet isn’t just for techies—Web companies need CPAs, too, but only the risk-tolerant need apply. If you are excited by the unpredictable and hunger for new challenges and greater responsibilities, then joining a Web start-up may be just what the career doctor ordered.
Mutual Funds
Revised peer review standards, which become effective January 1, 2001, are designed to streamline the review process for participants and reviewers and improve the quality of financial reporting. The changes will most notably affect the nearly 18,000 small firms that perform only review or compilation engagements (and no audits).
Business & Industry / Corporate Governance
The SEC and other regulatory bodies have developed rules that give the audit committees of corporate boards of directors increased responsibility—and, perhaps, liability.
Technology Workshop
Financial reports printed on paper are static documents. What’s on the paper is what you get. But technology opened the door to a new kind of financial report—one that allows a user to dig below the surface of the numbers on a screen to their source. Here’s how to prepare such a drill-down report.
Practice Monitoring
Revised peer review standards, which become effective January 1, 2001, are designed to streamline the review process for participants and reviewers and improve the quality of financial reporting. The changes will most notably affect the nearly 18,000 small firms that perform only review or compilation engagements (and no audits).
Assurance Services
CPAs’ third-party legal exposure with the new SysTrust assurance engagement is uncertain but probably will vary from state to state. CPAs who know the legal history in their states can make informed decisions about entering this exciting new field and make themselves as “lawsuit proof” as possible.
Software
Businesses and professional organizations are agreeing on a universal business reporting language—XBRL—and they’ve committed substantial resources to develop it. The language soon will be loaded on most accounting software products. XBRL surely will revolutionize how business data are reported, used and calculated.