Sarbanes-Oxley
Management and independent auditors working to fulfill the internal control reporting requirements of Sarbanes-Oxley cannot focus exclusively on transaction-based, activity-level controls. The control environment is an important component of the internal control structure that must be considered. Finding ways to test and evaluate its subjective elements is quickly proving to be a complex and challenging task.
Disaster Preparedness / Practice Management
To be truly prepared for a crisis, a firm should test its disaster recovery plan for weak spots so it can remedy them and refine the plan before documenting and distributing it. Thereafter it should test quarterly or whenever something changes. Here’s how to go about it.
Financial Reporting / Technology
A free new product from Microsoft makes it simple for financial report users to automatically and precisely feed data and descriptions into Excel worksheets and Word documents for swift, efficient sharing of information.
Tax
Businesses must be careful to classify workers properly as independent contractors or employees. If the IRS reclassifies a worker as an employee, a company faces liability for back payroll taxes, plus penalties and interest and possible criminal sanctions.
Financial Reporting / Practice Development / Sarbanes-Oxley
To comply with Sarbanes-Oxley guidance, public companies will have to upgrade their internal control systems. One result is that CPAs have a new professional opportunity: They can become consultants to document and test companies’ internal controls for entities they do not audit. Here’s how some practitioners are responding to the call.
Fraud
Small businesses sometimes unwittingly grease the skids that allow an employee to steal from them. Here is a typical case in which it took only two internal control deficiencies in a small office to enable a thief.
Technology
The article evaluates a collection of some of the most useful technology products for accountants, including computers, printers, scanners, personal digital assistants, data backup and security software, data storage devices, Internet telephones, presentation projectors and flexible battery chargers.
Glimpse of the Past
The first world Congress of Accountants, held in 1904, set the stage for important developments that are as meaningful to the profession today as they were 100 years ago.