The AICPA’s Auditing Standards Board issued two final standards on internal control. Statement on Standards for Attestation Engagements (SSAE) no. 15, An Examination of an Entity’s Internal Control Over Financial Reporting That Is Integrated With an Audit of Its Financial Statements, converges the standards practitioners use for reporting on a
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TOPICS
Management accounting
Pessimism Grows as Credit Crisis Persists
Rising unemployment and the persistent credit crisis soured the outlook of CEOs, CFOs and other CPAs working in business and industry, according to a quarterly survey by the AICPA and the University of North Carolina’s Kenan-Flagler Business School. Pessimism was at an all-time high in the survey, which began Nov.
Banks Still Looking for Bottom
The outlook was somber in Washington on Wednesday at the annual AICPA National Conference on Banks & Savings Institutions, where more than 1,000 CPAs gathered to discuss accounting issues in the ailing banking industry. “The S&L crisis was a Sunday school picnic compared to what we’re going through today,” said
PCAOB Proposes Seven Auditing Standards Related to Risk Assessment
The PCAOB voted to propose a slate of seven auditing standards related to risk assessment and response. The standards would supersede the board’s interim auditing standards related to audit risk and materiality, audit planning and supervision, consideration of internal control in an audit of financial statements, audit evidence, and performing
G-20 Addresses Accounting Issues at Financial Summit
Leaders of 20 of the world’s richest nations agreed on common principles to guide financial market reform at the Summit on Financial Markets and the World Economy in Washington on Saturday. An attached plan charged G-20 financial ministers with accomplishing “immediate” high priority tasks designed to strengthen financial market transparency
Highlights
The AICPA’s Professional Ethics Executive Committee (PEEC) issued an exposure draft, Interpretation 101-17, Networks and Network Firms, under Rule 101, Independence, of the AICPA Code of Professional Conduct. Along with new or revised definitions for network, network firm and firm, the ED proposes that when CPA firms form
Building an Effective Whistleblower Program
One of the most effective and inexpensive methods of monitoring the pulse of a business is to create a confidential whistleblower hotline. According to the 2008 Association of Certified Fraud Examiners Report to the Nation on Occupational Fraud & Abuse, tips have historically been the most common means of fraud
Modernizing Business Reporting
The AICPA’s Assurance Services Executive Committee issued a white paper to address how transparency in financial reporting will be improved through the use of eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) and enhanced business reporting (EBR) that takes into account nonfinancial factors that affect a company’s value. The paper, The Shifting Paradigm in
Linking Strategy to Operations
Harvard Business School professor Robert S. Kaplan is co-developer of both activity-based costing and the balanced scorecard. In 2006, Kaplan was elected to the Accounting Hall of Fame, and received the Lifetime Contribution Award from the Management Accounting Section of the American Accounting Association. In 2008, the Institute of Management
Tax Treatment of Rebates May Be Clearing Up
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY The IRS has attempted for many years to categorize rebates as deductions rather than exclusions so that the restrictions of IRC § 162 can be applied. But the courts have allowed exclusion treatment for direct seller-to-buyer rebates. Though the IRS has had some success in the courts
Refocusing on Reliability
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Current technical literature precludes CPAs from performing review engagements when independence is impaired and requires modifying reports to disclose lack of independence in compilation engagements. The AICPA Reliability Task Force asserts that the conceptual foundation regarding the services CPAs provide to clients should be modified to refocus on
Making the Invisible Visible
Recent research confirms that while most executives agree that intellectual capital is critical to the future success of their businesses, their approaches to measuring and managing this performance enabler are either poor or nonexistent. This has provided the impetus for the AICPA, in conjunction with CMA Canada and CIMA, to
Managing Multiple Identities
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Identity management addresses the difficulties encountered when one physical user has separate user IDs and passwords on multiple systems and applications. Access management addresses the challenges associated with the specific access rights and permissions of multiple user IDs. Large, complex organizations have the greatest potential to benefit from
Subjects of Substance
Your issue of May 2008 may well stand among the best journalism in our profession, with not only the codification of GAAP (“Framing the Future,” page 40) but a thorough discussion of the late crisis in the subprime mortgage market and the role of accounting there (“The Role of Fair
Fair Treatment of Fair Value?
The Journal of Accountancy ’s May 2008 discussions of fair value “accounting” (“The Role of Fair Value Accounting in the Subprime Mortgage Meltdown,” page 34), more correctly described as fair market valuation, are interesting. Each opinion on this subject presents a compelling argument. Fair Value vs. The Audit Debates on
A Better Way to Gauge Profitability
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Return-on-equity (ROE) is the correct profit metric to evaluate the performance of a business. However, the primary emphasis on financial ratio analysis must be on operating performance. The “advanced” version of the DuPont model remedies the original model’s failure to cleanly separate the effects of operating and financing
Managing Corporate Divestiture Transactions
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Corporate divestitures, the sale of stock or assets of a segment of a business, are an important class of business transaction by virtue of their pervasiveness (more than onethird of all M&A activity in a given year) and their size (averaging more than $175 million per deal). Divestitures
Internal Controls
The Committee of Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commission (COSO) released an exposure draft, Guidance on Monitoring Internal Control Systems . Developed by COSO through a process led by a Grant Thornton LLP team, the guidance is designed to help organizations monitor the quality of their internal control systems. “This
Currency Translation Adjustments
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Accounting for currency translation risks can be very complex. This article addresses only the basics and provides some tools to help the reader understand the issues and find resources. Globalization has changed the old accounting rule that debits equal credits. Net income became just one part of comprehensive
Unleash the Power of Lean Accounting
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Lean accounting concepts are designed to better reflect the financial performance of a company that has implemented lean manufacturing processes. These may include organizing costs by value stream, changing inventory valuation techniques, and modifying financial reports to include nonfinancial information. Value stream management (VSM) is a
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Right-sizing risk management
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