Attestation Update – A&A for CPAs. – Page 20 – Technical stuff for CPAs providing attestation services.

Another overview of blockchain technology; time to start figuring out this stuff.

Leave a Comment / Accounting, Pondering / Jim Ulvog

“Buzzword Bingo: Blockchain” by planeta is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

Sure does look like this blockchain technology is going to be a big deal. Might be time to start getting our minds wrapped around the concept.

For starters, check out this short overview:

[youtube=https://youtu.be/6WG7D47tGb0]

For a bit more detail:

8/4/17 – Bill Sheridan at Business Learning Institute – Block chain might remake accounting. The opportunities are huge. – Introductory article is one of the better overviews I have read. It introduces the video shown above.

One sentence description of Block chain, quoting from the article:

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Another overview of blockchain technology; time to start figuring out this stuff.Read More »

Another overview of blockchain technology; time to start figuring out this stuff. Read More »

Not only will Wells Fargo fake account fiasco not go away, but new fiascos keep appearing – 1

Leave a Comment / Other stuff / Jim Ulvog

Photo at Wells Fargo San Diego museum in October 2016 by James Ulvog.

I’ve been sitting on a string of articles describing the mess Wells Fargo has created for itself by opening accounts without customers’ permission. That issue keeps hanging around like a bad hacking cough.

At the same time some new fiascos have surfaced.

It is time to get caught up, so here are some articles I saw a few months ago:

4/4/17 – Wells Fargo advertisement in Wall Street Journal – The bank published a full-page public letter from the CEO.

He describe the steps taken by the bank to make things right. I will paraphrase or nearly quote the steps:

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Not only will Wells Fargo fake account fiasco not go away, but new fiascos keep appearing – 1Read More »

Not only will Wells Fargo fake account fiasco not go away, but new fiascos keep appearing – 1 Read More »

Suggestion for coping with massive change that could replace your job: Take full responsibility for developing new skills for yourself.

Free resource you can copy and paste to develop a Quality Control document for a small CPA firm.

Leave a Comment / Audits, Compilations & reviews / Jim Ulvog

Cover of free resources from AICPA, used under fair use.

Did you know the AICPA has provided a tool you may use as a starting template to develop a Quality Control document?

If you perform compilations, reviews, or audits, you are required to have a written QC document. Even if you aren’t going through a system review. Even if you only do comps.

If you perform audits and will have to go through a system review, keep in mind you are obligated to have quality control program in place before the system review starts, even before the peer review year begins. That means you really really need to have a QC document in place. (Yes, I’m talking to you, my fellow sole practitioners.)

The AICPA’s template can give you an easy starting point, in case you want to step up your policy.

There are two documents, one tailored for a sole practitioner and the other for small firms. Here are links to the documents:

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Free resource you can copy and paste to develop a Quality Control document for a small CPA firm.Read More »

Free resource you can copy and paste to develop a Quality Control document for a small CPA firm. Read More »

Things really can go terribly wrong. Do your backups work? How’s your disaster planning?

Leave a Comment / Other stuff, Pondering / Jim Ulvog

Disasters can happen. Consider:

How will you recover if you lose your wallet?
How will your business recover if ransom ware encrypts your server?
What is your planning to survive a tornado if your business is in Oklahoma, a hurricane if you work on the east coast of Florida, or a flood if you live in low territory next to river that overflows once a decade?

Rumbi Bwerinofa-Petrozzello ponders these questions in her 7/2/17 post If Lost…Then What?

She tells of finding a wallet on the ground, walking into the adjacent restaurant looking for the owner by glancing between the patrons and the photo on the driver’s license in the wallet. No luck.

When she got home she was able to do a bit more research. She located the woman and returned the wallet.

Life hack tip: make sure you have a business card with a current phone number and email in your wallet so that if a kind-hearted person finds your lost wallet the nice person can reach you quickly.

From there she transitions to disaster recovery. A few questions for you to ponder:

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Things really can go terribly wrong. Do your backups work? How’s your disaster planning?Read More »

Things really can go terribly wrong. Do your backups work? How’s your disaster planning? Read More »

Before the tsunami hits it might be time to tune into the accounting rules on the horizon.

Leave a Comment / Accounting / Jim Ulvog

“tsunami” by hansol is licensed under CC BY 2.0

While you have been sitting on the beach enjoying life this summer, have you noticed that dark, odd horizontal line out there on the horizon?

It isn’t a figment of your imagination. There really is a tsunami wave out there in the distance of the accounting ocean and it is going to hit the shore where you are sun bathing.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, there will be fresh waves of water hitting the beach over four years.

The good news? Maybe one or two or three of the waves will miss your organization.

Here is a quick glance of what’s on the horizon:

Overhaul NFP financial statement presentation
Restricted cash on cash flow statement
Revenue recognition for all entities
Grant and contribution recognition for NFPs
Most leases brought onto the statement of financial position
Credit losses on loans and receivables

Here is just a bit more detail:

(Cross-post from my other blog, Nonprofit Update, so this will focus on not-for-profit issues.)

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Before the tsunami hits it might be time to tune into the accounting rules on the horizon.Read More »

Before the tsunami hits it might be time to tune into the accounting rules on the horizon. Read More »

Happy Birthday America!

Announcing “Ancient Finances”, my newest blog

Leave a Comment / Other stuff / Jim Ulvog

Silver Roman denarius. Photo courtesy of Adobe Stock.

Ancient Finances will explore finances and money during the Viking age and Roman Empire. Lots of posts on other blogs addressing those topics have been cross-posted to the new blog. This includes lots of discussion of the loot Alexander the Great lifted during his rampaging world tour.

I’ve been having loads of fun reading about the Viking age and am intrigued by finances and money during the Roman Empire.

Why a new blog?

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Announcing “Ancient Finances”, my newest blogRead More »

Announcing “Ancient Finances”, my newest blog Read More »

Accountants coping with change. PTIN fees tossed out. New audit report from PCAOB.

Leave a Comment / Accounting, Audits / Jim Ulvog

A few interesting reads for accountants.

If we keep learning, robots will free us up from dreary work but won’t take away our jobs
Federal court keeps PTIN requirement in place but overturns the fee requirement
PCAOB expands standard auditor’s report

5/30/17 – Bill Sheridan at Business Learning Institute – Robots aren’t stealing our jobs. They’re setting us free. – Mr. Sheridan describes how we as accountants could thrive as computers take away the basic number crunching parts of our work.

Those tasks we do that can be automated will shift. That will leave the strategic thinking, critical thinking, collaboration, communication, and anticipation to us.

In my little brain, I have a way to describe this – So let’s say you have a program that can review 100% of disbursements instead of you drawing a sample of 40 or 60 items. Cool.

In any client that still uses humans to run their organizations, how many exceptions do you know think you will need to address?

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Accountants coping with change. PTIN fees tossed out. New audit report from PCAOB.Read More »

Accountants coping with change. PTIN fees tossed out. New audit report from PCAOB. Read More »

Description of Scutum, a Roman Legionnaire’s shield.

Leave a Comment / Other stuff / Jim Ulvog

This shield is flat. It is also protected on the edges by metal. “Shield of Roman legionairies ‘Scutum’, after AD 100. Athens War Museum, replica” by Dimitris Kamaras is licensed under CC BY 2.0

Adrian Goldsworthy provides a good description of a Roman shield, called a scutum, in his book The Complete Roman Army on page 129. A well-preserved shield was found at Dura Europus that dates from the 3rd century.

The shield is 3’ 3” tall by 2’ 8” wide in a curved shape.

It is two inches thick, consisting of three layers of wood glued together.

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Description of Scutum, a Roman Legionnaire’s shield.Read More »

Description of Scutum, a Roman Legionnaire’s shield. Read More »

Comments on changes to financial statement presentation during 2017 CalCPA Not-for-profit conference, part 2

Leave a Comment / Accounting / Jim Ulvog

Here are a few of the comments from CalCPA’s May 24, 2017 Not-for-profit conference about major overhaul of financial statement presentation that I thought would be of interest to others in the nonprofit community. This post addresses ASU 2016-14. Part 1 addressed tax, revenue recognition, and single audit update sessions.

(Cross-posted from my other blog, Nonprofit Update.)

Accounting update – The first presenter is a FASB staff person. While comments made are the presenter’s opinions, we ought to pay attention to such a person’s opinions. Another disclaimer is the following summaries are from me.

ASU 2016-14 is the document changing not-for-profit financial statement presentation. We all need to get to the place where ASU 2016-14 or 16-14 easily rolls off our tongues.

ASU 2016-14:

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Comments on changes to financial statement presentation during 2017 CalCPA Not-for-profit conference, part 2 Read More »

Brain stretching accounting articles for CPAs

Leave a Comment / Accounting, Audits / Jim Ulvog

Image courtesy of Dollar Photo Club before their merger into Adobe Stock.

Here are a few articles to stretch your brain when you are ready for some mental exercise:

Is the double-entry accounting system broken?
What is the recidivism rate for white-collar criminals and how could that affect my audits?
What possible changes are on the horizon for the audit opinion?

5/17/17 – Tom Selling at The Accounting Onion – Double-Entry Accounting and Modern Times – As a real brain stretcher, consider whether our double-entry accounting system is fundamentally broken.

Work with me a minute while I highlight and summarize a few ideas from the article.

A basic concept of double-entry accounting is that debits on the left side of the balance sheet represent all the assets of the entity. This includes all of the resources that are available for the entity to use in order to make money and all the assets against which creditors have a claim.

On the credit side, liabilities represent all of the claims against the organization. The equity section represents the value that belongs to the owners.

Prof. Selling points out there’s a variety of problems with using the statement of financial position as a representation of economic reality.

He points out and then moves past the idea that not all debits are assets and not all credits are liabilities. That’s easy to understand.

More significantly is that not all assets are reflected as debits and not all liabilities are reflected as credits.

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Brain stretching accounting articles for CPAsRead More »

Brain stretching accounting articles for CPAs Read More »

Logistics for a Viking force in the field – part 2

Leave a Comment / Other stuff / Jim Ulvog

A Viking army would need somewhere around 180 tons of grain to feed an army of 1,000 warriors during a 3 month siege. Image Courtesy of Adobe Stock.

Let’s take another look at logistics for a Viking army. In about 868, Ivar the Boneless, one of Ragnar Lothbrok’s four sons, fortified Nottingham.

A fun book, The Sea Wolves: A History of the Vikings by Lars Brownworth, described this campaign and its logistics.

King Burghred of Mercia combined forces with King Athelred of Wessex to deal with the Viking invasion. The allied forces advanced on Nottingham where the Vikings were patiently waiting behind their fortifications.

The Vikings tried to avoid attacking in battle. Instead, their preferred tactic was to draw an attack and then respond with a withering counterattack. They excelled at defense.

Short version of the story is Ivar was better supplied than the Saxons, whose soldiers faded away to go home and take in their harvest.

The siege ended when Ivar accepted an unspecified, though presumably really large bribe, Burghred acknowledged Ivar, and Ivar headed north to York.

The book describes the logistics of surviving a siege.

With 1,000 warriors, an army the size of Ivar’s required 4,000 pounds of flour and 1,000 gallons of water a day. That would be 4 pounds of flour and 1 gallon of water per soldier.

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Logistics for a Viking force in the field – part 2Read More »

Logistics for a Viking force in the field – part 2 Read More »

Helpful comments from 2017 CalCPA Not-for-profit conference, part 1

Leave a Comment / Accounting, Audits / Jim Ulvog

Here are a few of the comments from the May 24, 2017 Not-for-profit conference presented by California Society of CPAs that I thought would be of interest to others in the nonprofit community. Since all comments are the opinion of the speaker, neither their name nor organization will be mentioned. The ideas mentioned can stand or fall on their own.

This is the first of two posts. The next discussion will address changes in financial statement presentation outlined in ASU 2016-14. In this post: tax, revenue recognition, and single audit.

(Cross-posted from my other blog, Nonprofit Update.)

Tax update:

It might just be possible that filing a form 1023 or 1023-EZ is so easy that people can get exempt status for an organization without knowing the requirements to properly operate a charity and maintain exempt status. In examinations to follow-up on exempt status, the IRS is finding a lot of charities are out of compliance.
One of several focuses of the IRS is filing of FBARs, those forms used to report overseas bank accounts. One ripple effect of chasing money laundering is the impact on charities who have overseas accounts. Even though there is minimal risk of those accounts being used for tax evasion the FBAR filing requirement still apply. As a reminder, the deadline for filing FBARs is now April 15 with a six-month extension available.

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Helpful comments from 2017 CalCPA Not-for-profit conference, part 1Read More »

Helpful comments from 2017 CalCPA Not-for-profit conference, part 1 Read More »