The Intermediate Employee Benefit Plans Audit Certificate exam tests your knowledge related to auditing employee benefit plans, including defined contribution, defined benefit, and health and welfare plans, in accordance with AICPA standards and DOL rules and regulations. This exam is offered in a timed online format and consists of 100 multiple choice questions. In order to successfully pass the examination, you must understand and apply the core concepts related to client acceptance, engagement planning, engagement analysis, concluding an engagement and guiding principles for employee benefit plan audits. Some of the topics that will be tested on the exam include: Planning and general procedures Internal control Investments and investment issues Types of plans Key compliance elements Limited scope issues Financial statement presentation, disclosure, and regulatory reporting Online Access Instructions A personal pin code is enclosed in the physical packaging that may be activated online upon receipt. Once activated, you will gain immediate online access to the product. Your Certificate and Digital Badge After passing the exam, you will be awarded with a certificate in the form of a digital badge. Digital badges allow you to distinguish yourself in the marketplace and show your commitment to quality. The badge can be posted to your social media profiles and linked to your resume or email signature, providing maximum visibility to your achievement. You will receive your official score and certificate or retake information 5 business days after completing the exam. Important note: Your exam purchase entitles you to one exam and one re-take if you do not pass the exam. Prior to using your re-take, the AICPA recommends you study any topics identified in your initial exam results. If you do not pass either the initial exam or the re-take, you must purchase the exam again, in order to take it again. Exams passed outside of these purchase and re-take rules will not result in the issuing of a digital badge. If you have any questions regarding the completion of your exam or re-take, please contact [email protected] to verify your results. By making this purchase, you must understand and agree that the AICPA has the absolute and unrestricted right to revoke or suspend any rights to use the digital badge image, or any representation thereof, if you are (a) convicted of any crime punishable by more than one year in prison or for any crime related to dishonesty, or (b) disciplined by any governmental or non-governmental authority that regulates, or enforces a code of conduct related to, your professional activities, including but not limited to, a state board of accountancy, AICPA, IRS, SEC, or PCAOB, or (c) a peer reviewer restricted from performing peer reviews by the Peer Review Program. System Requirements AICPA's online CPE courses will operate in a variety of configurations, but only the configuration described below is supported by AICPA technicians. A stable and continuous internet connection is required. In order to record your completion of the online learning courses, please ensure you are connected to the internet at all times while taking the course. It is your responsibility to validate that CPE certificate(s) are available within your account after successfully completing the course and/or exam. Supported Operating Systems: Macintosh OS X 10.10 to present Windows 7 to present Supported Browsers: Apple Safari Google Chrome Microsoft Internet Explorer Mozilla Firefox Required Browser Plug-ins: Adobe Flash Adobe Acrobat Reader Technical Support: Please contact [email protected].

The Handbook of Commercial Mortgage-Backed Securities is a cornerstone reference in this emerging sector of the structured finance market. This Second Edition provides updated coverage of the market, the instruments, the tools used to assess these securities, and tax accounting issues.
In addition to an overview of the commercial real estate finance and commercial property markets, this book also covers property-market framework for bond investors, the role of the servicer, an investor's perspective on commercial mortgage-backed coupon strips, defaults on commercial mortgages, assessing credit risk, an options approach to valuation and risk analysis, legal perspectives on disclosure issues, and federal income taxation.

Due to the developments in the role of governments, the importance of government accounting and financial reporting is increasing. This led to changes in Government Accounting all over the world. For institutional, public finance and other reasons this has not always been done for central governments and regional and local governments in the same way. Some countries maintain the cash basis, some changed over to the accrual basis. Many of them started at first with lower government levels, only few changed over completely. Comparative Issues in Government and Accounting aims to give insight in the array of different patterns the world shows with respect to government accounting and financial reporting. Of course a complete overview would have been too ambitious a goal. This book brings together an interesting number of academics coming from a representative number of countries to get an impression of the situation and especially of the existence and the backgrounds of similarities and differences. Thirty-five authors and co-authors produced 21 chapters reflecting on the situations in 16 countries on 4 continents. Countries dealt with are Albania, Australia, Belgium, China, Egypt, Finland, France, Japan, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Russia, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States.

In the banking industry, inaccurate record keeping can generate negative consequences. By developing solutions to address such issues, financial reporting initiatives can be optimized. Accountancy and the Changing Landscape of Integrated Reporting is a pivotal reference source for the latest research findings on the development of a framework for integrated reporting within the accountancy profession. Featuring extensive coverage on relevant areas such as corporate social responsibility, financial performance, and corporate reporting, this publication is an ideal resource for academics, researchers, graduate-level students, and professionals across the fields of management, economics, and finance.

In an era of fierce international competition, manufacturing firms must have a thorough understanding of their cost structure and how that structure relates to pricing and product mix decisions. Two competing conceptual approaches to designing product cost systems that support decision making are Activity-based Costing and the Theory of Constraints. Rather than argue in favor of one to the exclusion of the other, Robert J. Campbell presents a new approach to cost system design that combines the strengths of each school of thought, thereby overcoming the significant limitations of each. The need to price the product mix in order to exploit constrained resources is advocated by the Theory of Constraints, while the need to examine resource consumption from activities, both value adding and non-value adding, to support the principles of JIT is advocated by Activity-based Costing.

After examining the nature of a firM's cost structure as it relates to the activities performed by various functional areas, Campbell discusses the development of activity-based cost systems through an extensive example. Activity-based costing can lead to building excessively complex accounting systems that lack focus and provide confusion about short-run versus long-run changes in the cost structure. After a chapter examining short-run cost behavior and cost relationships, an in-depth discussion of the Theory of Constraints and how it is contrasted to, and complemented by, activity-based costing follows. In these middle chapters the strengths of each methodology are identified and combined into a unified approach to product cost systems. Later chapters provide discussion on pricing strategies, customer profitability analysis, and providing cost measures that recognize either loss of learning or volume-related efficiencies in machine-paced organizations. This book is an important resource for executives or consultants seeking to implement new cost management systems that lead to improved decision making, as well as for educators seeking to reconcile and understand Activity-based Costing and the Theory of Constraints.

The food industry faces an unprecedented level of scrutiny. Consumers are not only concerned with the safety and quality of food products but also the way in which they are produced. At the same time the food industry has developed new ways of assuring appropriate standards for its products and their methods of production, developing systems such as TQM and HACCP to identify and manage key steps in production. These new methods require new skills in auditing. Auditing in the food industry provides an authoritative guide to the range of standards and the auditing skills they demand.
Part one sets the scene with an introductory chapter reviewing developments in standards affecting the food industry. There then follows chapters on how retailers audit their suppliers and how governments have moved from a traditional inspection role to one of 'regulatory verification' with its emphasis on auditing the robustness of a business's own systems for managing safety and quality.
Part two examines the key aspects of safety and quality. A first chapter reviews the ways retailers assess supplier HACCP systems. There is then a chapter reviewing TQM systems that provides a context for a discussion of auditing techniques for HACCP-based quality systems. A final chapter looks at standards governing the analytical methods used in safety and quality control.
Part three considers newer standards that are becoming increasingly important in the food industry. There are chapters on benchmarking an organisation against others as a way of improving performance, auditing the impact of food processing operations on the environment and auditing organic food processing.
Auditing in the food industry is a valuable guide to the range of standards facing the food industry and the ways it can audit, and thus improve the quality of its performance.

Worldcom, Enron, Parmalat...a succession of financial scandals have made front page news throughout the world in recent times. In this book, the author investigates the origin of creative accounting and explains how and why some companies use these shortcuts to cover different needs. "Creative Accounting Exposed" is written in a clear, enjoyable style with a wealth of case studies.

Once considered an intruder into the academic community, accounting has developed into a full fledged social science, with fierce competition among its different paradigms. Riahi-Belkaoui explains that these paradigms, each striving for primacy through publications, conferences, and other means of self-exposure, are characterized by their exemplars, their image of the subject matter, their theories, and finally the methods they use. In doing so they have given accounting a certain, new cachet. Riahi-Belkaoui thus provides a critical examination of each of these paradigms in an effort to guide researchers and policymakers in their search for proper interpretations and positionings of the products of accounting research. A stimulating discussion for academics and knowledgeable professionals alike.

In six chapters each devoted to a specific paradigm, the book elucidates each paradigM's contribution to accounting thought and practice. Covered are the anthropological/inductive paradigm, the true income/deductive paradigm, the decision usefulness/decision model paradigm, the decision usefulness/decision maker/aggregate market behavior paradigm, and the decision usefulness/decision maker/individual user paradigm. The result is a book that makes unique use of philosophy of science concepts in accounting, and a book that will also have applications in university graduate-level courses in research methodology and accounting theory.

This is a well-written treatment of the subject that will help increase the auditor's understanding of the beneficial use of a wide range of analytical procedures.

"Journal of Accountancy"

This handbook is intended to help auditors at all experience levels in financial, operational, and compliance audits. It presents and discusses 16 analytical auditing procedures in detail. The author comprehensively discusses evidence theory that will enable auditors to appropriately combine evidence form analytical auditing with evidence from more traditional audit procedures.

"Business Information ALERT"

Analytical auditing--or the generation of audit evidence from an analysis of the relationships among financial and nonfinancial data--is now a widely used technique in audit practice. This volume is intended to help auditors at all experience levels by providing a better understanding of the range of available analytical auditing techniques, the underlying theory supporting these techniques, and the solutions to practical problems in applying these techniques. Sixteen different practical analytical auditing procedures are discussed and illustrated in detail, including the graphical, average change, and weighted average methods of simple time series analysis; simple reasonableness tests; various structural modeling; and ratio analysis techniques.

In addition to thorough coverage of key analytical auditing techniques, McKee also presents a comprehensive discussion of evidence theory that will enable auditors to appropriately combine evidence from analytical auditing with evidence from more traditional audit procedures. He reviews the relevant professional auditing standards for all types of auditors, including international auditing standards, those of the American Institute of CPAs, internal auditing standards, and governmental auditing standards. Especially valuable is an extended discussion and illustrations of computer applications of analytical auditing techniques. Throughout the book, tables and figures facilitate the reader's understanding of the techniques and concepts presented. An indispensable handbook for use in financial, operational, and compliance audits, this volume belongs on the bookshelf of every CPA, internal auditor, and governmental auditor.

Hardbound. This series rose out of the belief that the international accounting literature should devote more attention to the study of the accounting problems and issues of emerging economies (developing and newly industrialized countries).The desire of the series is to raise the level of interest in the specific problems of accounting in emerging economies and raise the awareness of the real issues, so that accounting in these countries will not be seen as a matter of copying what is done in industrialized countries. Through an increasing awareness of the real issues and the accounting practices advocated in it, the annual has become relevant to actual needs, and is making a real contribution to the accounting development process of emerging economies.

Managing for Results is a model of organizational reform that utilizes performance indicators, strategic planning, and benchmarks. The model focuses on linking these systems to improve performance and public accountability. This book studies the implementation of Managing for Results on six states identified by the U.S. General Accounting Office as leaders of internal reinvention efforts. Government and business practitioners, as well as scholars and researchers of public administration and policy, will find this book useful in assessment, selection, and measurement of state-level reform efforts.

A new form of accounting statement--the value added statement--is gaining popularity in the corporate annual reports of the largest companies in the United Kingdom. This new statement can be viewed as a modified version of the income statement. Like the income statement, the value added statement reports the operating performance of a company at a given point in time, using both accrual and matching procedures. Unlike the income statement, however, it is interpreted not as a return to shareholders but as a return to the larger group of capital and labor providers. Riahi-Belkaoui shows that the value added statement can be easily derived from the income statement and is therefore easily adaptable to the needs of U.S. companies.

To illustrate the usefulness of the value added statement, Riahi-Belkaoui devotes Chapter 1 to a thorough discussion of its many benefits. He then analyzes the usefulness of the value added concept in understanding the characteristics of corporate takeovers in the United States, and in Chapter 3 he discusses the relationship between the value added concept and the systematic risk of U.S. companies, concluding in Chapter 4 with a discussion of value added statements in financial analysis. His book will thus interest not only accountants, teachers, and students who follow trends in international and multi-national accounting but also those who want to prepare themselves for the development of value added techniques and procedures that might reasonably be expected in the United States.

This volume describes the construction method for a global accounting framework, referred to as the world accounting matrix (WAM). The WAM allows for the consistent presentation of international trade and finance figures in relation to domestic saving and investment. The book aims to show how a WAM can be used for the analysis of trade and finance in a global context. It also seeks to show how WAM can contribute to the solution of the large statistical problems in national and global macroeconomic data.

Producers and users of management accounting information are confronted with crucial behavioral phenomena--factors that can affect the communication of this information and its use. Riahi-Belkaoui shows what these factors and phenomena are and how to understand and cope with them. In doing so, he shows how producers and users together can improve the efficiency of management accounting itself.

He explains the judgment process in management accounting, identifies and explains the major behavioral phenomena, and then provides ways to use them for the firM's benefit. Thoughtful and comprehensive, his book is important reading for executive decision makers in almost all organizations throughout the public and private sectors.

Drawing upon cost accounting, mathematics, operations research, economics, and the behavioral sciences, Riahi-Belkaoui answers the call for a unique, multifaceted approach to the study of management accounting. His goal: to enhance performance in the essential tasks of cost estimation, allocation, planning, control, and performance evaluation. He covers the traditional techniques, but expands into quantitative methods and applications, then extends further into the behavioral unification of these techniques. His book is state of the art, ingenious in the way it adapts quantitative methods' solutions to traditional cost accounting topics, and innovative in its use of the behavioral implications. The result is an important resource for professionals, academics, and upper-level students in the field.

Riahi-Belkaoui arranges his various techniques chapter by chapter. First, he looks at cost allocation and then at cost-volume profit analysis under stochastic conditions. In Chapter three he treats regression for cost estimation; in Chapter Four, the learning curve for the same purpose. He takes up advanced planning analysis in Chapter Five, advanced control analysis in Chapter Six, and decentralizing and performance evaluation in Chapter Seven. He then finishes with an important discussion of transfer pricing.

Based on the IFRSs issued by the IASB on 1/10/08, this provides a simplified summary of the main elements of IFRSs, linking each line in the financial statement to the chronologically numbered standards and then summarizing in diagrams each of those Standards to help the reader visualize the key decisions and choices their application requires.

James Allen was one of our finest thinkers. In this five-in-one omnibus edition Allen shows you the power of positive thinking and a path to prosperity with dignity. These teachings are as timeless today as they were when they were written. Many of todays best sellers, such as The Power of Positive Thinking, Laws of Attraction, and The Science of Success, owe a deep and abiding debt to these great works. Now you can read the words of the master directly and not distilled through another who is merely recycling them. This edition includes: As a Man Thinketh, The Way of Peace, Above Life's Turmoil, Byways to Blessedness, and The Path of Prosperity.

This is a collection of eleven essays authored by prominent accounting historians and designed to aid potential as well as experienced researchers in the methodologies and resources available for scholarly work in accounting history. The project, of which this book is the end product, has the full endorsement and backing of the Academy of Accounting Historians. Chapters on resources include the finding and utilization of archival materials (including ancient forms); the growing importance of the Internet in historical research and the Accounting Research Database as a vital, contemporary finding aid; the possibilities for joint venturing with accounting practitioners and their organizations; and the pivotal influence and immediacy of oral history. Methodological chapters explore the advantages and pitfalls of archival research; the synergistic relationships that exist between accounting and economic history, including business history and capital-markets research; the techniques for doing biography; and the issues involved in writing to historical paradigms.

Advances in International Accounting is a referred, academic research annual, that is devoted to publishing articles about advancements in the development of accounting and its related disciplines from an international perspective. This serial examines how these developments affect the financial reporting and disclosure practices, taxation, management accounting practices, and auditing of multinational corporations, as well as their effect on the education of professional accountants worldwide.
Advances in International Accounting welcomes traditional and alternative approaches, including theoretical research, empirical research, applied research, and cross-cultural studies.

This seventh volume in the series deals with a variety of topics in the field of advances in public interest accounting.

Effective Management Control deals with a critical but relatively neglected and misunderstood aspect of organizational effectiveness: the process of controlling the behavior of people in organizations. The issue of organizational control and the design of an optimal control system is essential for the long term effectiveness of an organization: too little control can lead to confusion and chaos; conversely, too great a degree of control can result in the erosion of innovation and entrepreneurship. This monograph presents a conceptual framework for approaching these issues, and examines the role accounting can play in a successful control system. The author works towards an understanding of the nature, role, elements and functioning of organizational control and control systems in organizations. The book posits and discusses the features of a core control system and its component parts, including: planning, measurement and feedback, evaluation and reward sub-systems. It also discusses the ways in which a core control system operates within a larger organizational structure and culture. The theory is illustrated through its application to a particular case study.

This annual publication is devoted to the advancement of ethics research and education in the profession and practice of accounting. It aims to advance innovative and applied ethics research in all accounting-related disciplines on a global basis; to improve ethics education in and throughout the professional accounting and management curricula at the undergraduate and graduate levels; and to provide a source of information for the professional eccounting and auditing community for integrating ethics and good business practices in public firms, business corporations, and governmental organizations. This annual's primary objective is to provide a forum for business leaders and educators to discuss and debate the plethora of ethical issues that affect accounting organizations and the financial community in the USA and abroad. It includes commentary and editorials from accounting practitioners, standard setters and regulators. Papers are empirical or theoretical in nature, and draw upon paradigms in related disciplines such as philosophy, psychology, theology, economics and sociology. Volume 2 includes a section on the public interest considerations of ethical obligations of CPAs in advertising and solicitation. Other subjects covered include: ethics violations in the accountancy profession; applying behavioural models as prescriptions for ethics in accountancy practice and education; auditor's responsibility to the public; and the impact of ethics education in accountancy curricula.

Can corporate social awareness be translated into positive and predictable financial outcomes? Yes. Riahi-Belkaoui covers the two main components of corporate social awareness--corporate reputation or organizational effectiveness and socio-economic accounting information--and ties them directly to what happens on the corporation's bottom line. Presenting a thorough investigation of the models and results of the connection between desirable corporate behavior and economic performance, he shows not only that the outcomes are positive but that they are also predictable. A provocative and assuring study, this is intended for corporate management concerned with finance and accounting, and their colleagues with similar interests in the academic community.