Click here to listen free to the new podcast. by Dr. Tom Ratcliffe, Ph.D, CPA Plain-English Accounting Bi-Weekly Report Executive Summary: ASU 2011-12 [FASB ASC 220]: Comprehensive Income Display – On Friday, December 23, 2011, the FASB released some new comprehensive income display guidance that amends recently-released guidance associated with how reclassification adjustments related to comprehensive income items need to be reflected in financial statements. ASU 2011-11 [FASB ASC 210]: Disclosures Related to Offsetting – On Friday, December 16, 2011, the FASB and IASB each released some enhanced disclosure guidance to address circumstances where assets and liabilities are offset in statements of financial position. Compilation & Review Reports: Paragraph Placement Matters – Especially in compilation engagements, given the lack of definitive guidance related [...]
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Plain-English Accounting Bi-Weekly Report by Dr. Tom Ratcliffe, Ph.D, CPA Plain-English Accounting EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: The AICPA Staff has issued some interpretive guidance related to how practitioners who are performing compilation and review engagements should address situations when required supplementary information accompanies the basic financial statements that have been compiled or reviewed. On Wednesday, December 14, 2011, the FASB released ASU 2011-10 [FASB ASC 360] that addresses a practice inconsistency associated with when in substance real estate needs to be recognized in financial statements. As practitioners are preparing to perform the second cycle of annual compilation and review engagements using the guidance in SSARS No. 19, they might want to be aware of some particular issues that will receive some focus [...]
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Accounting Standards Update 2011-10 [FASB ASC 360] by Dr. Tom Ratcliffe, Ph.D, CPA Plain-English Accounting Yesterday [Wednesday, December 14, 2011], the FASB released Accounting Standards Update [ASU] 2011-10, entitled Derecognition of in Substance Real Estate. The guidance in ASU 2011-10 amends the guidance in FASB Accounting Standards Codification [FASB ASC] Topic 360, entitled Property, Plant, and Equipment, to address a practice inconsistency as to how financial statements have been reflecting circumstances when parent company reporting entities cease to have controlling financial interests in subsidiaries that are in substance real estate, where the situation arises as a result of default on nonrecourse debt of the subsidiaries. Practice Note: The guidance in FASB ASC 810, entitled Consolidation, requires that parent companies deconsolidate [...]
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Many staffers would rather clean toilets than file for reimbursements According to new data from Concur, an expense-accounting management company: 59% of employees recall making at least one mistake on an expense report they’ve submitted in the past 12 months, More than a third own up to five errors or more in the same period.
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2011 targets now pushed back a year to 2012. The Financial Accounting Standards Board and International Accounting Standards Board will now plan to issue a revised proposal to overhaul rules on revenue recognition, updating a proposal they first made last year, according to the Wall Street Journal.
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World moving too fast to plan even a year ahead. So an increasing number of companies are abandoning the age-old tradition of annual budgeting and adopting instead a system of constantly updated forecasts. They call them rolling forecasts, flexible budgets, or event-driven planning. But they aren’t annual budgets. CFO.com cites as examples: Unilver, Norton Lilly International, Statoil, and American Century Investments. ”Meanwhile, other companies continue to execute a budget but, for the most part, manage the business without it,” Russ Banham reports. “Call it a sign of the times, literally.”
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Principles of accounting remain unchanged, but…
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Do latest developments suggest a slow death?
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But still years away from being ready. via CFO Some 34% of CFOs rank “convergence to IFRS” as their No. 1 issue. Cumulatively, CFOs rank IFRS convergence higher than any other accounting issue, according to the latest Duke University/CFO Magazine Global Business Outlook Survey. Yet asked to describe their companies’ “readiness to comply with global accounting standards,” 44% said they hadn’t “begun to address convergence,” while 39% said they were preparing, “but far from ready.” Corporations are “still several years away from having to implement a plan” to comply with a converged set of standards, says James Kaiser, U.S. Convergence IFRS leader for PricewaterhouseCoopers. Yet, as alarming as the state of awareness without preparedness sounds, it just about fits the [...]
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Will Xero give QuickBooks a run for it’s money? CPA Jason Blumer of Blumer CPAs thinks so. Here he evangelizes for Xero, a small-business cloud-based accounting solution from New Zealand, and for “social” accounting. More about Jason Blumer on CPA Trendlines here.
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