"The budget and financial reporting processes are well known sources of frustration for most CFOs. Seeking a quick fix to the problem, the common solution is to pour more money into new and better software. This leaves the root cause, the inefficient and dysfunctional underlying processes and routines, unaddressed. As this book shows, substantial and sustainable improvements are only achieved through an holistic approach to process improvement, technology, strategy, and people."
–Tom Henry Knudsen
Executive Vice President, Telenor Eiendom Fornebu AS

Proven methods for improving efficiency

Corporations face a high turnover among financial managers, rapid changes in technology, lack of time and process redesign skills, and ongoing ambiguity about primary objectives behind the budgeting and financial reporting processes. Amid this frenzy, it is the fundamental efficiency of these processes that dramatically impact overall business performance. Process Improvement for Effective Budgeting and Financial Reporting provides financial managers with a compelling blueprint for increasing efficiency and eliminating waste of time and energy. Four operational experts lay out an 80/20 plan–improving 80% of processes in 20% of the time it would take to improve 100%–and explain a Business Process Improvement (BPI) plan that incorporates:

• The emerging trends affecting financial managers today
• Step-by-step process implementation
• Interviews with industry leaders, consultants, and managers who have successfully instituted BPI plans
• Appraisals of the available software that can help or hinder the process

There is no substitute for improved efficiency. CFOs, controllers, budget managers, and financial analysts will significantly benefit from adding this authoritative guide to their professional libraries.

Volume 25 features eight articles. In the lead article, Savannah Guo, Sabrina Chi, and Kirsten Cook examine short selling as one external determinant of corporate tax avoidance and find that short interest is negatively associated with subsequent tax-avoidance levels and this effect is incremental to other factors identified by prior research. Next, Mark Bauman and Cathalene Rogers Bowler examine the effect of FIN48 on earnings management activity, by focusing on changes in the deferred tax asset valuation allowance. In the third article, Anthony Billings, Cheol Lee, and Jaegul Lee study whether the lowering of dividend taxes as part of the U.S. Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2003 resulted in an increase in dividend payouts at the expense of R&D spending. The fourth article by Brian Dowis and Ted Englebrecht examines reasonable compensation in closely-held corporations and the impact of gender, political affiliation, and family makeup on decisions made in the U.S. Tax Court. Then, a practice-related study by Sonja Pippin, Jeffrey Wong, and Richard Mason reports on a survey of Americans living abroad on the impact of tax rules explicitly designed for these individuals. They find that Americans living abroad experience the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act as negatively impacting their lives. The next three articles in this volume have an international focus. Zakir Akhand investigates the effects of the corporate sector on the effectiveness of selected tax compliance instruments in the context of large Bangladesh corporate taxpayers. K-Rine Chong and Murugesh Arunachalam examine the determinants of enforced tax compliance behaviour of Malaysian citizens with trust in the tax agency assumed to be a mediating variable. Lastly, Bitzenis and Vasileios investigate the effect of the economic downturn in Greece on the factors determining the level of tax morale through primary data from a European Union funded research project on the Greek shadow economy.

Financial reporting practices differ widely between countries and this has far-reaching implications for multinational businesses. Over more than a century, there have been attempts to classify countries into groups by similarities of practices. With the recent spread of International Financial Reporting Standards, it might appear that classification is largely of historical interest, but this is not the case, for several reasons explained in this book. Christopher Nobes offers a critical analysis of the many previous accounting classifications, having drawn lessons from other fields of science and social science. Revised and updated to reflect the IFRS era, the book discusses how old classifications are reflected in today's international differences in practice under IFRS. It concludes with a discussion on the most useful classifications, and how classifications can still be relevant in the era of international standards. This book will be essential for academics, postgraduates and undergraduates in international accounting, accounting theory and to international accounting professionals.

The purpose of this book is to set out the basic principles and conceptual issues of the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS).

A practical manual for preparing UK GAAP-compliant disclosures UK GAAP Financial Statement Disclosures Manual is the practical handbook accounting professionals need to prepare audit-proof financial statements. The recent establishment of the new UK GAAP has brought significant changes to financial reporting, and this guide collects all of the latest guidelines into one place. Clear, concise and heavily geared toward practical application, this book is designed for easy navigation with stand-alone chapters and real-world examples. You'll find step-by-step guidance for the entire disclosure process, with explicit instruction on what to include, how to include it and why. Financial statements prepared from 2015/2016 in the UK and Republic of Ireland will appear significantly updated, and this manual gives you the guidance you need to understand what's required to achieve full compliance. Insufficient or incorrect disclosures are frequently the reason why financial statements are rendered deficient. This book provides practitioners with a reference and guide for all aspects of financial statement disclosure preparation. * Get up to speed on the most recent UK GAAP guidelines * Understand the 'what' and 'why' of disclosure statements * Study real-world example statements for practical guidance * Prepare statements that stand up to auditor and regulator scrutiny Many practitioners fall afoul of regulators' criticisms with subjective, incomplete, omitted or incorrect disclosures, resulting in sanctions being brought against the practitioner or the firm. Financial statement disclosure emphasis is on transparency at a time when changes in the profession require an entirely new method of preparation. For practitioners who need to stay ahead of the curve, UK GAAP Financial Statement Disclosures Manual is the invaluable reference to keep within arm's reach.

-- Explanations of IFRS and IFRIC interpretations
-- Practical insights into implementation issues
-- Worked-out illustrations and examples
-- Case studies with solutions
-- Multiple-choice questions with answers
-- Extracts from published financial statements

A one-stop resource for understanding and applying current

International Financial Reporting Standards

As the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) makes rapid progress towards widespread acceptance and use of IFRS (formerly named International Accounting Standards) worldwide, the need to understand these new standards increases. Now fully revised and updated, IFRS Practical Implementation Guide and Workbook, "Third Edition" is the straightforward handbook for understanding and adapting the IFRS standards.

This quick reference guide includes easy-to-understand IAS/IFRSoutlines, explanations, and practical insights that greatly facilitate understanding of the practical implementation issues involved in applying these complex standards.

Clearly explaining the IASB standards so that even first-time adopters of IFRS will understand the complicated requirements, the Third Edition presents:

Ten recently issued and revised IFRS standards including business combinations, financial instruments and newly issued IFRS for SMEs

New International Financial Reporting Interpretations Committee (IFRIC) projects

Multiple-choice questions with solutions and explanations to ensure thorough understanding of the complex IFRS/IAS standards

Case studies or "problems" with solutions illustrating the practical application of IFRS/IAS

Excerpts from published financial statements around the world

Designed with the needs of the user in mind, "IFRS Practical Implementation Guide and Workbook," Third Edition is an essential desktop reference for accountants and finance professionals, as well as a thorough review guide for the IFRS/IAS certification exam.

"SAP Foreign Currency Revaluation-regulations, its impact, and what it takes to implement it in SAP-is a single handbook that simplifies a complex and daunting task of currency valuation for SAP and other ERP implementers. A must-read "
-Kalpesh Khandhadia, SAP Consultant, Linksoft-IT Inc.
"Following the process presented in this book, we eliminated the hours we spent each month manually reviewing and adjusting our global currency financial statements. Thank you Susanne Finke, for making this complicated topic understandable "
-Ron Roberts, Process Lead, Financial Systems, Hollister Inc.
"It's great to see all the foreign currency information captured in one place and spelled out so clearly. Great job "
-Nadean L. Moore, SAP FI Consultant, Moore Consulting
"This SAP Foreign Currency Revaluation book . . . covers the necessary SAP tables and transactions for revaluation and provides excellent examples of the SAP entries. A well-written book."
-Dave Paz, SAP Consultant, DLP Consulting LLC
With essential information on the proper rules and regulations needed to comply with FAS 52, SAP Foreign Currency Revaluation: FAS 52 and GAAP Requirements is a valuable reference for controllers, CFOs, IT and accounting managers, and SAP consultants who are involved in FAS 52 compliance projects, regardless of whether their companies are using SAP, Oracle, PeopleSoft, or proprietary software.
Its detailed coverage of statutory requirements, business execution of currency revaluation in SAP, and SAP configuration walks readers through:
* The U.S. accounting statutory requirements, net income, organizational, and financial consolidation impacts
* An overview of currency revaluation with discussion of stock transfer and tax implications
* FAS 52 requirements for currency exchange rates and translation
* Corporate standards for G/L indicators that are impacted by currency revaluation
* Three methods available to execute currency revaluation and their differences
* One of the newer ways the SAP R/3 software provides users to execute currency revaluation
* The SAP configuration to implement currency revaluation
* Setting up custom variants to view the critical fields used in the currency revaluation

Put the most valuable business tool to work for you

The balance sheet is the key to everything--from efficient business operation to accurate assessment of a company's worth. It's a critical business resource--but do you know how to read it? "How to Read a Balance Sheet" breaks down the subject into easy-to-understand components.

If you're a business owner or manager, this book helps you . . . Manage working capital Generate higher returns on assets Maximize your inventory dollars Evaluate investment opportunities

If you're an investor, this book helps you . . . Determine the market value of a company's assets and operations Predict future earnings and trends Assess the impact of capital expenditures Identify potential "red flags" before the crowd

"How to Read a Balance Sheet" gives you the bottom line of what you need to know about:
Cash Flow * Assets * Debt * Equity * Profit and how it all comes together.

Publishing the Nonprofit Annual Report offers your nonprofit organization hands-on guidance to help you create an annual report that goes beyond fulfilling your financial reporting responsibilities and instead becomes a valuable communications, marketing, and image-building tool. Written by Caroline Taylor--a consultant who has more than twenty years of experience producing award-winning annual reports--this essential guide takes you through the report-writing cycle from start to finish. Step by step, she shows you how to create a plan, fit the report process into the overall schedule, assign tasks, develop the executive message, work with designers to integrate visual elements, and get the report printed on time and within budget.

Fundamentals of Entrepreneurial Finance provides a comprehensive introduction to entrepreneurial finance, showing how entrepreneurs and investors jointly turn ideas into valuable high-growth start-ups. Marco Da Rin and Thomas Hellmann examine the challenges entrepreneurs face in obtaining funding and the challenges investors face in attracting promising ventures. They follow the joint journey of entrepreneurs and investors from initial match to the eventual success or failure of the venture. Written with the goal of making entrepreneurial finance accessible, this book starts with the basics, develops advanced topics, and derives practical insights. Da Rin and Hellmann build on academic foundations from several disciplines and enrich the text with data, mini-cases, examples, and exercises.

Cash holdings play a critical role for all corporations. They serve as a source of funding for investment projects that create value for shareholders and as a cushion against costly financial distress. On the other hand, excess cash holdings can induce wasteful spending and attract unwanted attention from labor unions and activist investors. In Applied Corporate Risk and Liquidity Management, Erik Lie brings risk management and liquidity management together to explore how corporations can ensure they have sufficient-but not excess-cash holdings, both now and in the future. He begins by covering the determinants of liquidity, the consequences of suboptimal liquidity, and how to manage liquidity. Lie then demonstrates two ways to control current and future cash holdings: the mitigation of risk factors on operating cash flow and cash holdings and the payouts made to investors. Through this integrated approach, he explores how risk management and payout policy can and should be used to maintain the proper cash level. Using cash simulations throughout, Lie shows how to determine whether firms should hedge, which hedging mechanism to use, and which payout mechanism or debt structure is suitable. With practical tools rooted in liquidity management, this book presents a strong theoretical foundation for risk management and payout policy, discusses practical considerations, and demonstrates applied tools that help managers make good decisions.

This book investigates the legitimacy of the current Australian Financial Services Licensee-Authorised Representative (AFSL-AR) licensing model, as specified in the Commonwealth Corporations Act 2001. The book rectifies the deficiency in scholarly attention to this matter by developing a new conceptualised framework for the financial planning discipline. It takes into account theories in agency, legislation, legitimacy and the independent individual regulatory regimes in other professions; thereafter integrating this framework with the financial planning theory to examine the legitimacy, or what was found to be the illegitimacy of licensing advisers via multiple third party conflicted commercially oriented licensees. This book makes a very useful reference to understanding financial planning licencing model in Australia.

An application of the principles required to understand consolidations.

This book has been designed to meet the needs of students studying financial accounting at a second year, third year or intermediate honours level. It can be successfully used with the accounting textbook Gripping GAAP.

This book explains how and why corporations use the internet for reporting to their stakeholders. While many such books are limited to financial reporting, this book extends to business reporting, environmental, social and governance (ESG) reporting and integrated reporting. A key part of it is the impact of the major drivers entering into modern reporting, including the movement to data driven decision making, impact of big data, advanced analytics, and the use of electronic representations of data with tools such as XBRL. It also explores the various vehicles for using the internet, including social media and blogs as well as corporate websites and the websites of regulators. And it delves into the impact of portable devices, like smart phones and tablets. Corporate reporting on the internet is changing fast because of changes in technology and in stakeholder expectations. For example, stakeholders now expect a lot more from companies than they did a few years ago in disclosing the effects of the company on the environment and the effects of the environment on the company. The book describes the evolution of corporate reporting in recent years, the state of the art now and provides a roadmap for companies to follow in the near future - a roadmap they should be starting on now. So this book is of interest to executives in charge of the reporting function for their companies, to students of accounting and management who aspire to corporate reporting responsibilities and to serious investors and others with a strong interest in corporate reporting and the direction in which it is headed. Most importantly, the book lays out a strong case for integrated reporting, what it means, attempts at integrated reporting so far, and the future of integrated websites. It also shows how reporting on the internet is ideally suited to fostering the growth of integrated reporting.

Auditor reporting on going-concern-related uncertainties remains one of the most challenging issues faced by external auditors. Business owners, market participants and audit regulators want an early warning of impending business failure. However, companies typically do not welcome audit opinions indicating uncertainty regarding their future viability. Thus, the auditor's decision to issue a "going concern opinion" (GCO) is a complex and multi-layered one, facing a great deal of tension. Given such a rich context, academic researchers have examined many facets related to an auditor's decision to issue a GCO. This monograph reviews and synthesizes 182 recent GCO studies that have appeared since the last significant review published in 2013 through the end of 2019. The authors categorize studies into the three broad areas of GCO: (1) determinants, (2) accuracy and (3) consequences. As an integral part of their synthesis, they summarize the details of each study in several user-friendly tables. After discussing and synthesizing the research, they present a discussion of opportunities for future research, including issues created or exacerbated as a result of the global COVID-19 pandemic. This monograph will be of assistance to researchers interested in exploring this area of auditor responsibility. It will also be of interest to auditing firms and individual practitioners wanting to learn what academic research has examined and found regarding this challenging aspect of audit practice. Auditing standard-setters and regulators will find it of interest as the authors review numerous studies examining issues related to audit policy and regulation, and their effects on GCO decisions. The examination of GCO research is extremely timely given the financial and business disruption caused by the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic. This unprecedented global event has caused companies, auditors and professional bodies to revisit and reassess their approach to going concern, and to think even more deeply about this fundamental business imperative.

Despite a plethora of techniques to analyse the financial performance of a business, there has been no single methodology that has been overwhelmingly preferred by users. This could be an indication that either the methods themselves are deficient or they are limited by other factors that are not easily overcome. Unlike the current offerings in the field, which focus on issues relating to business performance management or non-financial aspects (such as market efficiency, satisfaction and workforce productivity), this book offers a solution to a major gap in the literature and understanding for those seeking to measure, analyse and benchmark the financial performance of any organisation (for-profit, not-for-profit and government agencies). It clearly identifies why current techniques fail; proposes and evidences a solution that overcomes these issues by including two algorithms that can be combined, to solve this problem; and demonstrates the practical application of the technique to the benefit of users in order to pinpoint real performance levels and insights. One of the largest issues this book will help to overcome is the inability to compare the accounts of businesses/organisations from different countries that report in different currencies. This technique eliminates the need for currency translations and the issues that arise with that process. This book is an invaluable and practical guide to assist accounting and finance practitioners in measuring and comparing financial performance across firms with different business models, different accounting policies and different scales of operations.

The go-to-guide for developing effective financial analysis and valuation models-updated with new content and materials This fully revised edition of Building Financial Models builds on the elements that have made it renowned in the field of financial modeling, including how to develop a sound conceptual understanding of accounting for modeling and how to apply the tools at hand, which are the two key attributes for producing effective and easy-to-use models. A classic in how-to books for designing and building financial models for use in a wide variety of finance roles, this edition includes: * The latest Microsoft Excel shortcuts, functions, and modeling techniques* A full chapter on accounting that takes the mystery out of the subject for modeling work* Expert methods for building models that are easy to understand and superbly fit to the task* New additional materials on valuation analysis and sections on scenarios and sensitivity analysis through the use of Data Tables Supported by all-new exercise files from the companion website, this comprehensive guide takes you step by step through the entire process of developing a projection model, starting with a basic pilot model with each chapter introducing additional concepts and features. By the end, you will produce-through your own hands-on participation--a fully functional and dynamic integrated financial statement projection and valuation model. With Building Financial Models, Third Edition, you have everything you need to boost your financial modeling expertise.