Jim Ulvog

Hey, it is just plain fun to read the Going Concern blog. Really should add it to your RSS feed.

For those of us in small firms who might have some idle curiosity of what the staffing looks like in a large office in the Big 4 world, Going Concern has some juicy details of the headcount by job level in the LA office of Deloitte.

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What does the staffing of a big office of a Big 4 firm look like?Read More »

Some short scenes have been combined into a 9 minute cartoon along with an intro and extro. The first of several feature-length cartoons is available on my other blog, Once Upon Internal Control. This one discusses some creative internal controls over cash and a few ideas on how to maintain security over the offering until it is counted by the count team. More to follow!

Cartoon can be found at:

Once Upon Internal Control – part 1

Posted at Once Upon Internal Control: The exit interview with the reporter who was investigating reports of extravagant spending. Final cartoon in the tale of the church that did internal controls well can be found here.

All four cartoons plus the intro will be rolled into a feature cartoon.

I have a new cartoon posted at Once Upon Internal Control showing good internal controls in a local church. The dramatization is based on a reporter calling for comment about rumors of a high-flying lifestyle.

Cartoon called: When a reporter calls, good procedures save the day. Visit the other blog for the cartoon. I will be posting cartoons there.

Going Concern is a blog that’s worth reading everyday. Would be worthwhile to include it in your RSS reader. The site covers the Big 4 world from a staffer’s perspective. Lots of juicy news from the trenches. Lot’s of great accounting news.

Today’s scoop is an excel spreadsheet that lists the PwC compensation structure from new staff level through year 14 director and new partner. Includes base pay and bonus.

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Compensation grid for PwCRead More »

Don’t know how to interpret this. You can figure for yourself what it means for your practice.

Looks like the prospects for new accounting grads is good.

CPATrendlines, in their article, Number of Accounting Grads Hits New High, reports:

Newly minted accountants have some of the brightest job prospects in the nation, with nearly 90 percent of accounting firms forecasting the same or increased hiring of graduates this year compared with 2010, and nearly three quarters, 71 percent, of the largest firms anticipating more hiring – an indicator of a rebounding economy.

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Hiring trends strong for new accounting graduatesRead More »

I wrote an article for Bank of the West called Essentials of Internal Control.  It discusses one superb internal control you should be using for cash, explains that trust is not an internal control, and offers a creative idea to improve control over cash.

A one sentence summary of internal control is at the end of this paragraph:

CPAs can talk for hours about internal control. Can the concepts in all those long presentations be made a little simpler to grasp? Let’s try to boil down all those internal control ideas to one sentence. Ready? Internal controls are the procedures you put in place so that one person cannot do something wrong and hide having done so.

The three key ideas discussed:

• The bookkeeper should not sign checks
• Trust is NOT an internal control
• Review unopened bank statement by someone outside of accounting

Please read the full article.

My article was included in this newsletter.