More good stuff for auditors – 3-3-14

A few links and comments of interest to auditors –

2-1 – CPA-Scribo – Code of Ethics Codification Approved by AICPA – Charles Hall has the news flash that the codified rewrite of the ethics rules has been approved. Will be effective 12/15/14. See his post for a summary and link to the current version, which is subject to editing.

2-3 – Thriveal – Accounting for what? – Here’s a great thought question. As accountants, are we primarily number crunchers? Or are we storytellers? Trying to figure out how to tell a complex story about a lot of stuff working within the boundaries of a set of rules, only using numbers instead of paint or words?

2-5 – CPA-Scribe – Backdoor Thefts of Payroll Withholdings – I hadn’t thought of this scheme: overpay federal withholdings, deposit refund into your account.  Also, keep an eye out for an e-book from Charles Hall on fraud schemes in local governments.

2-6 – Sequence Inc – Fooling the Auditors in Seven Easy Steps– #4 & #7 remind us we are vulnerable to social engineering – be skeptical. Good reminders of the things we should always be watching.

2-11 – Re:Balance – The American Accountancy Regulators’ Report Card: Not  Pretty Sight The report card Jim Peterson would issue to the PCAOB comes close to that of Bluto as reported in the movie Animal House.  A long list of links will let you get up to date on any of the major issues you’ve missed. A few highlights:

F – auditor rotation, an idea that merely

…lacked board support, legislative backing or a sound intellectual or empirical basis ..

My observation: other than that, it was a great idea.

D – disclose lead audit partner name, which is

 … an idea of such long gestation and so little substance that its potential usefulness is inverse to the time of its exposure.

2/24 – AICPA – A Golden Opportunity: Performing IPSAs of Conflict Minerals Reports – If you want to go way creative on new services to provide clients, you could check out auditing corporate Conflict Minerals Reports. Those are reports that companies issue to say the minerals they use in manufacturing were not obtained from conflict areas. An Independent Private Sector Audit is performed under the Yellow Book and looks at the process the company went through to prepare their Conflict Minerals Reports. Verifying or validating the results is not the goal of the IPSA. That means you won’t have to make any trips to war zones to complete the field work.

Update: Oops. Date in title corrected.

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