The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) recently voted to finalize two related standards aimed at improving audits of accounting estimates and the work of specialists. Though the new, more consistent guidance would apply specifically to public companies, the effects would likely filter down to audits of private entities that use accounting estimates or rely on the work of specialists...
In recent years, external auditors have focused more attention on related party transactions. Although related party transactions aren’t necessarily bad, they do raise some concerns about the risk of misstatement or omission in financial reporting...
Many businesses have adopted robotic process automation (RPA), or plan to do so in the future. While most RPA initiatives target “core” business operations, routine accounting functions also can be automated to help lower costs and allow personnel to focus on higher-level analyses and strategic projects. Here’s some insight into how to integrate RPA in your accounting department...
Only 11% of executives are making use of artificial intelligence (AI) and over one-third of companies spend more time collecting data than analyzing it. These are just some of the findings from a recent Association of International Certified Professional Accountants survey. Here are the details...
In 2018, U.S. organizations that suffered a data breach lost an average of $7.91 million as a result. That’s the highest average organizational cost of all the countries and regions covered in the 2018 Cost of a Data Breach Study by IBM and independent research firm Ponemon Institute. Malicious or criminal attacks were the source of more than half of those breaches, rather than system glitches and human errors...
In January 2019, the board of the International Organization of Securities Commissions (IOSCO) published a report intended to promote audit quality. It outlines best practices for audit committees. Although external auditors have primary responsibility for audit quality, the audit committee plays an important oversight role in the financial reporting process...
The accounting rules for reporting stock compensation have been expanded. They now include share-based payments to nonemployees for providing goods and services, under recent guidance issued by the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB)...
