How Much Time Should Finance Spend Doing the Right Thing?

As far as I’m concerned, doing the right thing is worth whatever amount of time it takes you to get there.

With budgeting and reporting, doing it fast is the basic goal – reducing the number of approval cycles and automating consolidations. It’s a process we just want to get done. Some pundits refer to the budgeting process as a headache; the goal is to reduce pain. Others note that budgeting is about not failing*. Most agree that budgeting has very little to do with doing the right thing to drive your business forward.

Business planning is all about doing the right thing. The “right thing” requires planning at the right level of detail with the right people in the room to make financially-sound decisions at the right time to drive your business forward and impact the bottom line.

CFO at 28: Career Advice from a Seasoned Professional

President and CEO of the Institute of Management Accounts and CFO Insights contributor Jeff Thomson spoke recently with Ben Mulling, CMA, CPA, CITP, CFO at TENTE Casters Inc. and member of the IMA Global Board of Directors.

Ben earned his title of CFO at age 28.

They discussed the increasingly strategic role accounting and finance professionals are asked to perform and the skills necessary to advance in the profession.

For more advice on how to succeed in today’s marketplace, watch the extended video interview below.

Small Business Owner to Accountant: “Make Accounting Valuable to ME”

Accounting services should be useful to a business owner, providing valuable insight into the business performance and activity.  Accounting professionals believe their services have value, but find it difficult to express that value when selling their services to prospective clients. The problem is that most professional accounting firms believe that what they sell is accounting:…

Why Private Company CFOs Would Benefit from a Separate Standard Setting Body

Bill Knese, CMA, CFM, CPA, member of IMA’s Global Board of Directors and CFO of Angus Industries, Inc. discusses whether private companies would benefit from a separate standard setting body.

Stay tuned for part two, and watch the full video interview below.

The True Measure of Finance Function Excellence: Deliver Value Efficiently

From major overhauls to specific process improvements, organizations featured in APQC’s 2012 Financial Management Best Practices Report are boosting both efficiency and effectiveness. The role of the CFO is analogous to the governor, an electronic device in automobiles installed to limit top driving speed. Current law in the United States holds CFOs of public companies…

Fortifying the Close-To-Disclose Process

A growing number of CFOs and finance directors are now turning their attention to the close-to-disclose process, which involves all activities needed to close an organization’s accounting books, perform all necessary intercompany accounting and reconciliation steps, finalize consolidated financial statements and, finally, release earnings and publish official statements with regulators ranging from the Securities and…

Finding Strategy

Knowing the purpose for the strategy is as important as building the strategy itself. So don’t wait to find your strategy when caught on the wrong foot, rather plan for the right purpose. The purpose should account for the best as well as the worst, and should plan for for issues to come.

The Worst Countries To Be A CEO

CEO pay in the U.S. is not “excessive” but rather reflects pay-for-performance packages, according to a new paper.

Writing in the Review of Financial Studies, the authors of “Are US CEOs Paid More? New International Evidence” say the bulk of American CEO compensation tends to be from equity rather than a base salary, it appears to skew higher.

But when you control for firms’ sales, industry, and firm, ownership, and board characteristics, U.S. pay is only slightly above the global average.