SEC Talks Covid Disclosures

Just in time for the end of second quarter, the Securities and Exchange Commission has published another dollop of guidance about financial disclosures companies should keep in mind as they navigate Covid-19.  The statement came Tuesday from chief accountant Sagar Teotia. It’s the latest in a series of pronouncements SEC officials have made since early…

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Relief on Covid-19 Lease Accounting Burdens

lease

Good news for financial reporting and corporate disclosure folks: the Financial Accounting Standards Board says companies do not need to go through a potentially mind-numbing examination of how the accounting for operating leases might change due to Covid-19. The guidance came from FASB on Friday. It says that companies do not need to account for…

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Dispatches From FEI 2019 Conference

CFRI 2019 conference

Financial Executives International is hosting its annual Corporate Financial Reporting Insights conference in New York this week, a who’s who of financial reporting regulators, executives, and other thought leaders. Radical Compliance couldn’t attend FEI in person this year, so as usual, we’ve collected a bundle of dispatches from social media to call out interesting points…

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A Better Understanding of Estimates

estimates

Last month the PCAOB published fresh guidance on how to audit accounting estimates. Today let’s take a deeper look at what that guidance says, because the principles it recommends can be quite useful for compliance and risk officers too. To begin with the obvious: Yes, this guidance is written for audit firms that are inspecting…

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New PCAOB Guidance on Estimates, Specialists

pcaob

Heads up, audit professionals: the PCAOB has released fresh guidance on how to audit accounting estimates and how to use specialists in complex audit work — two issues that are the subject of new audit standards going into effect in 2021. Each subject has two pieces of staff guidance, so that’s four PDFs for you…

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Podcast: Lease Accounting Compliance Update

lease

Confession: I love the new accounting standard for companies to report their costs for leases. Not so much because I applaud what the standard tries to accomplish (although I support that too) but rather, because implementation of the standard demonstrates so many compliance and internal control headaches today. Hear me out. The new standard —…

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Discrepancies in Corporate Disclosure

Several weeks ago we had an update here about the SEC’s idea to relax quarterly reporting rules, perhaps in favor of letting companies disclose more via their earnings release. Today let’s explore two practical challenges with that notion: companies can omit unwelcome numbers in their earnings releases, and change what those numbers are by the…

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Update on Semiannual Reporting: Zilch

reporting

Corporate disclosure mavens, we have an issue that needs attention: Nobody is talking about the SEC’s recent call for comments about moving to a semiannual corporate reporting regime. As you might recall, the SEC published its call for comment in December — 31 pages of questions, asking investors, corporations, and all other interested parties whether…

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Hertz, Estimates, and Internal Controls

Hertz

Who says a government shutdown means no news for internal control and compliance? On New Year’s Eve the Securities and Exchange Commission served up another juicy enforcement action, hitting Hertz Corp. with a $16 million penalty for sloppy accounting practices that led to a financial restatement in 2015. The case is worth a look because…

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SEC Asks Disclosure Reform Questions

reporting

The Securities and Exchange Commission is asking for opinions about the quarterly reporting system again, the latest volley in what could be a contentious debate in 2019 about corporate disclosure. The request for comment, published Tuesday, runs 31 pages long. It asks whether some disclosures in the Form 10-Q quarterly report could be abolished if…

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