CalCPA’s July magazine has a good, short overview of SSARS 19 by Marcia Hein. Article is SSARS 19: Game Changer.
She has some good ideas on the transition to first-time application of the new report. Well worth your time. She is a technical reviewer for the peer review program and a past chair of the California Peer Review program.
Quick overview of SSARS 19 Read More »
Maybe not such a great idea after all.
An E&Y partner, senior manager, and manager were sanctioned by the PCAOB for some file clean up in advance of an inspection. They backdated four difference pieces of new documentation. They did not identify the documents were added after the documentation completion date. All three are prohibited for several years from working for a firm registered with PCAOB. The partner was fined $50,000.
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You will have a particular date as the cut off for your peer review. This determines what is included in the population for selecting engagements to review.
A common misunderstanding is to think that the population for selection is those engagements issued during the peer review year.
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(cross-post from my other blog, Nonprofit Update.)
That is the title of a post by Seth Godin.
Here is his comment, which I quote in full:
Is there a simpler way to improve quality and responsiveness?
If you can’t sign it, don’t ship it.
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“Put your name on it” Read More »
Don’t understand LinkedIn? Know you oughta’ join the party but don’t know how to get started?
Having a presence in LinkedIn should be standard for all accountants. It is approaching the level of a business card in terms of basic tools every business person should have.
Prof. David Albrecht has a great introduction on his blog: LinkedIn for Accounting and Business Students.
Don’t let the title of his article lead you astray. …
CPAs whose licenses end between 34 and 66 received a reminder this week from the CBA that those lucky CPAs need to report by 7-1-12 whether they need to have a peer review.
All CPAs with licenses in that range number have to tell the board whether or not they are required to have a peer review. In one sentence, any firm providing attestation services must have a peer review. What’s the big dea? One of the biggest impacts is this new requirement includes sole practitioners who are not members of the AICPA.
My license is in that range. So I received my letter this week. …
Have a post up at my other blog, Nonprofit Update, about a fun analysis by Don Boudreaux looking at the comparative purchasing power of a non-supervisory employee working at average wages now compared to 1975.
I can’t think of a better time to be alive. Or, is the middle class better off today than in 1975?
He looks at items from a 1975 Sear catalogue and uses the average pay rate to convert the prices to the number of hours a person needs to work to buy the item. Then he compares to the number of hours to buy a reasonably comparable item today.
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Purchasing power of an average worker in 1975 compared to nowRead More »
Purchasing power of an average worker in 1975 compared to now Read More »
Perhaps it is because I’m attentive to the issue, but it seems doubts are spreading about the wisdom of adopting IFRS.
Rueters had this story: Analysis: Doubts emerge over U.S. move to global accounting
Key thread in this article: there isn’t, and won’t be, a uniform standard for all countries.
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Maybe adopting IFRS isn’t a foregone conclusion Read More »
Your peer review will cover A&A engagements.
The work that will be included in your peer review is accounting and auditing engagements, referred to as A&A. This obviously includes all your audits under SAS. It also includes your compilation and review services under SSARS.
Not so obvious is your services under the SSAE rules. This would be all those odd projects like examinations or compilations of prospective financial statements or written assertions, and other agreed-upon procedures.
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IASB and FASB announced they will release another exposure draft on the major changes to lease accounting. The volume of revisions they plan to make to the original exposure draft are significant enough that they want to another round of discussion. There announced timeframe is to finish their deliberations in the third quarter of 2011 with another exposure draft shortly after that.
Don’t expect a change in the basic concept that all leases are going to be brought onto the balance sheet. The news release makes that quite clear:
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FASB will issue another exposure draft on leases Read More »
The number of going concern opinions for public companies declined in 2010. Here is some good info for those of us outside the SEC world to learn what is going on beyond our field of vision.
Here is the recent trend, according to the article Going Concern Opinions Trail Off in 2010, at Compliance week, which is quoting a report from Audit Analytics:
How significant is that trend? Not that big of a change.
Since the above data is for public companies, I wanted to put it into perspective. I wondered how many public companies are listed. Found one webpage that quotes a number of 17,000 from many sources. The Audit Analytics home page says there are over 20,000. Let’s go with the 20,000 estimate.
So the change from year to year is rather small in relation to 20,000 public companies:
From 2003, which is the low of the last decade, to the high of 2008 is an increase of 776, which is 3.9% of public companies. From the peak of 2008 through 2010 is a decline of 453 going concern opinions.
Last step I took in looking at the trend is to calculate the number of going concern opinions as a percent of publicly traded companies (20,000 as mentioned above and assuming no change in the number of public companies):
An improvement? Yes. A major change? I don’t think so.
What’s new in this picture for me? I’m surprised how many going concern opinions there are for public companies, how small the change was from 2003 to 2008, and how small the improvement has been in the last two years.
(Hat tip: first, Going Concern and then, CPA Letter Daily)
Minor change in number of going concern opinions for public companies Read More »
So the auditor goes to the new client’s bank and gets copies of the bank statements from them. An entire year’s worth of statements. Does all the audit work. Everything looks fine. Issues their report. Everything is fine, right?
Except that in addition to the client cooking the books, the local bank made up those bank statements. Fraud came tumbling down because the auditor, yes notice the auditor tumbled to the fraud, went to the bank’s home office to get copies of the bank statements, which were drastically different from what the local branch provided.
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So what’s an auditor to do if the local bank is in on a massive fraud?Read More »
So what’s an auditor to do if the local bank is in on a massive fraud? Read More »
Here are a few things to consider.
Cost. That’s a biggie. Remember to consider the direct costs for the review, any travel time, and hotel & airfare if the firm is beyond driving distance. Cost is not the only factor though.
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New cartoon is available at Once Upon Internal Control.
Good procedures protect against false accusations – feature cartoon #2 from Once Upon Internal Control illustrates another way that good procedures can protect your staff. Cartoon runs about 8 1/2 minutes.
The first feature cartoon is here.
New feature cartoon on internal control Read More »
(cross-posted from my other blog, Nonprofit Update.)
Previous post introduced the ideas of Cliffs, Cul-de-sacs, and Dips explained by Seth Godin in his book, The Dip.
What do we do with that idea?
Seth Godin says:
It’s okay to quit, sometimes.
In fact, it’s okay to quit often.
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When is it time to let go of a project? The Dip, by Seth GodinRead More »
When is it time to let go of a project? The Dip, by Seth Godin Read More »