Waypoints: Ideas and Insights to Navigate Enterprise Complexity

If you commission regular audits of your company, you know the purpose of an effective audit is to deliver both an appropriate audit opinion and an opinion in which your shareholders and other stakeholders have confidence.  Many, if not most, accounting firms can provide that.  So what differentiates one audit firm from another, and how should you assess the quality of your audit? 

If your company uses leases to acquire assets without huge cash outlays, to enjoy lower interest rates than is possible with loans, or to reduce the risks of ownership, you may need to re-examine your lease and purchase decisions very soon. On November 11, the Financial Accounting Standards Board voted to proceed with the issuance of a final Accounting Standards Update on leases in early 2016.

The HORNE PMM team has been sharing its insights and ideas for a little more than six months, and we hope we’ve provided you with a valuable resource. Sometimes we write about emerging trends, sometimes we write about what we’ve learned, and sometimes we write about issues that can keep your company out of trouble.

If I had to guess, I’d say you are reading this on your iPhone, iPad, Galaxy or some other mobile device. I’m not clairvoyant; research shows more than half of all emails are opened on mobile devices.

It’s Halloween, and tiny goblins will be out for trick or treat on Saturday night. In this week’s blog, I thought I’d give you a few tips so you won’t be tricked by your vendor’s cybersecurity.

If you follow professional football, you know how valuable a left tackle is to a team. One of his key responsibilities is to protect a right-handed quarterback’s back or “blindside.” These players are so valuable that they command salaries second only to the quarterback.

As the unemployment rate declines and the labor market tightens, attracting and keeping talented staff members is becoming a serious issue. It’s particularly problematic for smaller businesses or those located outside of major metropolitan areas. We’ve noticed fierce competition for key talent in the industries we serve, as well as in our own industry, and I’d like to suggest a strategy for recruiting and retaining effective employees without a substantial outlay of cash – stock-based compensation.

In my July blog, I wrote about the likelihood of meaningful tax reform, possibly in 2017. The premise was that such an undertaking is long overdue, and the context was that political reality still will make it exceedingly difficult to accomplish.

You’ve closed the deal, and the new company is yours. You’re excited and ready to start putting your plans into action. What should you do first?

My advice? Do NOTHING.

In a recent blog, Josh Edwards mentioned that it’s easy to overlook transition plans in the busy weeks after an acquisition. Senior staff members are setting the direction for the new business while they manage the details of day-to-day operations, and everyone is working hard.

Fall is just around the corner, and as a chief financial officer, it’s not too soon to start thinking about the challenges your business will face in 2016.

I’m sure you’ve heard the saying, “Hope for the best, but expect the worst.” I’d like to offer the IT incident response version, “Hope for the best, but plan for the worst.”

How secure is your business data?

If you’re like many CEOs and CFOs, you hope it’s safe, but you have other, more pressing issues to address. I’ve heard many business leaders explain the reasons hackers wouldn’t be interested in their data: they’re too small, they don’t handle medical records, they don’t process credit cards, or they don’t sell anything over the Internet.