College students can’t stand the 150 credit hour requirement to sit for the CPA exam. Employers are desperate to find the next wave of accountants. And now the two main obstacles standing in the way are smelling the coffee. The American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) and the National Association of State Boards of […]
Federal rulemakers are requiring more transparency and detail in companies’ audits. Turns out all that extra detail is exactly what investors want. Ninety-three percent of investors want to analyze critical asset matters (CAMs) before potentially investing, according to a survey conducted by KRC Research on behalf of the Center for Audit Quality. (Caveat: Just 100 […]
Accounting firms face tougher fiduciary duties as the result of three new federal rules. The Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC) approved guidelines written by the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB), the commission’s Sarbanes-Oxley compliance arm. Employees of accounting firms and independent contractors can now be held liable if they “negligently, directly and substantially contribute […]
Artificial Intelligence is perfect for a range of Finance tasks. Billing, analysis, data processing — in many cases, the mundane but critical duties that require staffers’ time. One major exception? Accounting. The “Big Four” accounting firms (Deloitte, Ernst Young, PricewaterhouseCoopers and KPMG) all agree that AI and machine learning will certainly augment accountant and audit […]
Excel is great for summarizing data in tables, charts and PivotTables. Here are a couple of time-saving methods for summarizing data in Excel that Finance staffers can try: Excel Special Paste The Special Paste feature can be used to copy and paste both static and linked data. To use it, first copy the data that […]
The IRS is extending an olive branch to businesses that received tax credits related to COVID-19 in error. The tax cops are launching a second Employee Retention Credit (ERC) voluntary self-disclosure program to run through November 22. Previous ERC claims deemed improper by the IRS can be submitted. The good news: Employers that file can […]
Public companies expect third-party audits to be thorough and accurate. Many aren’t getting the results they expect. The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) is back with its annual report on broker and dealer (B&D) audits. The board reviewed compliance reports and exemption reports for 60 randomly selected auditing firms in 2023 (in previous years, […]
The conditional formatting tool in Excel allows users to apply many different formatting options to data. The benefit: sorting and recognizing data is much easier. These Excel formatting options include background colors, borders and font formatting — all visual cues that make it easier for finance pros and even non-finance employees to understand the data. […]
Can a company’s cybersecurity weakness equate to “ineffective accounting controls?” The Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC) says yes … … but for now, the courts say no. The SEC charged SolarWinds and its chief information security officer (CISO) Timothy Brown with fraud and internal control failures under section 13(b)(2)(B) of the Securities Exchange Act. SolarWinds […]
