Increasing Company Value with Integrated Reporting

Can we evolve the Finance job into an innovative activity? Yes we can.

Can we increase the number of corporate reporting users from just a few specialists to potentially everybody who is interested in our company? Yes we can.

Can we transform our financial statement from a boring encyclopedia into a business tool able to increase the value of our capitals? Yes we can.

Good Habits for Healthy QuickBooks

Using a QuickBooks desktop product is pretty simple – you install it and then you run it.  For many users, it’s just that easy and uncomplicated because they don’t need 3rd party integrated software, they don’t sync their files to other computers or services or try to share their QuickBooks data, and they remember to exit…

Completing the Picture - The CFO’s Ever-Changing, and Increasing, Reporting Responsibility

Best practice dictates that changes in technology should be aligned with, or at least accompany, changes in organisation. However, by being stated as best practice in itself, this may suggest that this is not always the case. Creating the capability to deliver the necessary reports and documents is posing more questions than answers in organisations…

The CPA for Small Business: Proactive, Responsive, and Helps Paint a Beautiful Picture

I recently read an article on AccountingWeb, written by Doug Sleeter and describing the findings of a published report titled What SMBs Want from Their CPA. The report is a summary of results from an annual study conducted by The Sleeter Group, and is intended to help accounting professionals understand the factors in the market which influence business use of professional accounting services. While adoption and use of technology was not named as the top item on the list, capabilities which can be rendered only if such adoption occurs were. In short, it’s not the technology that clients demand, but the level of service that professionals can only deliver by embracing advancements in technology and applying them to the client engagement.

Accountant Pirates of the Caribbean

Are accountants being unethical or just irresponsible when they misallocate costs to products, service-lines, channels, and customers? Are they not adequately serving the needs of their managers and workforce when they report flawed and misleading information needed for insights and better decision making? Should we place shame on them or shame them? There is a difference.

A Passionate Appeal for Activity-Based Costing (ABC)

Usually I am fairly rational
and do not let my personal emotions interfere with how I interact with others. However, as the readers of my blogs and articles may have detected, my more recent writings increasingly reflect my frustrations with old school accountants. I cannot disguise my irritation and annoyance with accountants who refuse to be progressive.

Government Accounting Systems: Where Will We Be in 20 Years?

Government accounting systems have evolved drastically over the past few millennia from the abacus to the modern spreadsheet. Technology has put the evolution in hyper drive. In addition, recent advances in business intelligence tools as well as big data and predictive analytics have modernized financial systems to help companies make smarter and better business decisions.

The more information we collect and share, the smarter we become. The same applies to today’s smart technology. How will technology continue to evolve government accounting systems in the next 20 years?

Why Accounting in the Cloud?

Business owners and managers need to keep close control of their financial data.  They need to know where they stand at all times, and having information available to make business decisions is essential.  When the financial information is in the office but the owner isn’t, how can wise decisions be made without access to supporting…

The Productivity Paradox: Accounting for Returns on IT Investments

There has always been somewhat of a struggle between the IT department and “management”, much of the difficulty existing with the need to demonstrate clear returns on investments for IT purchases. Unfortunately, expenditures in information technology are often the result of short-term views of long-standing problems, applying “solutions” that do not fully address the requirement or which do not deliver the productivity or performance gains expected, particularly in a dynamic and rapidly changing business environment. The assumption is that a wise investment in information technology will result with improved profitability and performance. [But} demonstrating this on paper is not always easily accomplished.