Inventory management systems: What’s right for your business?

If your business has significant inventory on its balance sheet, it can be costly. The carrying costs of inventory include warehousing, salaries, insurance, taxes, and transportation, as well as depreciation and shrinkage. Plus, tying up working capital in inventory detracts from other strategic investment opportunities. Reducing these costs can help improve a company’s profits and […]

Solid financial reporting can help attract debt and equity financing

Financial reporting plays a key role when a business needs funds for continued operations and strategic investment opportunities. Lenders and investors will generally want to review your company’s financial statements before they give it money. Timely, reliable reports can increase the odds that a bank will approve your company’s loan application and equity investors will […]

Best practices for M&A due diligence

Engaging in a merger or acquisition (M&A) can help your business grow, but it also can be risky. Buyers must understand the strengths and weaknesses of their intended partners or acquisition targets before entering the transactions. A robust due diligence process does more than assess the reasonableness of the sales price. It also can help […]

Auditing concepts: Close-up on materiality

As audit season begins for calendar-year entities, it’s important to review issues that may arise during fieldwork. One common issue is materiality. This concept is used to determine what’s important enough to be included in — and what can be omitted from — a financial statement. Here’s how materiality is determined and used during an […]

6 tips to improve job-costing systems

Companies that work on customer-specific or long-term projects — such as homebuilders, contractors, custom manufacturers and professional practices — generally track job costs to gauge the profitability of each project. In turn, this helps them bid future projects. Unfortunately, the job-costing process tends to be cumbersome, causing some expenses to inadvertently fall through the cracks […]

The future of accounting: How to embrace cutting-edge technology

Technology is transforming the accounting profession. When businesses moved from paper ledgers to spreadsheets, it improved the timeliness, accuracy and integrity of accounting-related data. Likewise, cloud computing and the ability to remotely access real-time data have allowed accounting departments to be far more responsive to an increasingly distributed workforce. Artificial intelligence (AI) is the latest […]

Tips for QuickBooks users: 5 mistakes to avoid during bank reconciliation

Reconciling bank accounts is critical to ensuring the accuracy of your company’s accounting records. The primary purpose of a bank reconciliation is to confirm that the transactions recorded in your bank statement match those shown in your accounting records. Generally, bank accounts should be reconciled at least monthly. However, conducting weekly or daily reconciliations for […]

What is your external auditor’s responsibility for cybersecurity?

Data breaches can be costly. The average total cost of a data breach has risen to roughly $4.45 million, according to a 2023 survey of information technology (IT) security professionals by the Ponemon Institute (a research center dedicated to privacy, data protection and information security policy). That figure has grown 15% overall in the last […]

FASB issues new segment expense disclosure rules

On November 27, 2023, the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) issued updated accounting rules on segment reporting. The guidance concludes several years of discussions aimed at providing investors with better information about a company’s business unit costs from the viewpoint of management. The rules will take effect next year for public companies. Existing rules The term […]

It’s important to track tools and small equipment

Is your business constantly replacing its tools and small equipment? Certain items that can fit in a backpack, pocket or even the armrest of a vehicle — such as power tools, hard hats, iPads and RFID readers — have a tendency to “walk away” from job sites, warehouses and offices. However, the cost of lost, […]