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Evaluating Your Audit Committee

Under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, the audit committee — not management or the full board of directors — is directly responsible for appointing, compensating and overseeing external auditors. Periodically, it’s a good idea to assess the effectiveness of your audit committee by performing a self-evaluation. Here are reasons to conduct a self-evaluation, along with some common techniques.

Why?

If your company is listed on the New York Stock Exchange, an annual self-evaluation is required. However, the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) recommends that all other companies, including not-for-profit entities and private firms, complete voluntary self-evaluations. The benefits include:

• Improving audit committee performance,
• Promoting candid discussions, and
• Identifying practices and procedures to conduct more effective meetings.

In general, a self-evaluation strives to make your audit committee more effective at assessing fraud risks and evaluating internal and independent auditors.

How?

There’s no universal right way to conduct a self-evaluation. Some companies do it strictly in-house, while others use outside evaluators. Some rely on written questionnaires, while others use personal interviews. According to the AICPA’s Audit Committee Effectiveness Center, common approaches to self-evaluation include:

Introspection. The committee members — and, possibly, the board chair — evaluate the committee’s performance by answering specific questions about the committee’s impact on the financial reporting process and its relationships with management and internal and independent auditors.

Performance improvement. The chief audit executive, CFO, CEO and independent auditor are asked to comment on the committee’s performance.

360-degree. Each committee member (including the chair) evaluates all the other members. To minimize the risk of alienating committee members, consider beginning the process by assessing the committee’s overall performance and then move on to individual performance reviews.

Competence. The committee, others within the company or an outside evaluator assesses the financial literacy of committee members. They look at, among other things, recent training on enterprise risk management, accounting, auditing, financial reporting developments, and current business and industry practices.

Leadership. The committee members discuss the committee chair’s performance, communicating any concerns to the board chair or the chair of the corporate governance committee.

Whichever approach or combination of approaches your company uses, it’s important to phrase questions in terms designed to elicit ideas for improvement rather than to highlight weaknesses.

Need help?

Whether your company is required to perform audit committee self-evaluations or you conduct them voluntarily, careful planning is critical to maximize the benefits. Contact us to help design an effective self-evaluation process based on your company’s specific needs.

© 2019

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M&A Due Diligence: Don’t Accept Financial Statements at Face Value

The M&A market was hot last year, and that momentum is expected to continue in 2019. Before acquiring another business, however, it’s important to do your homework. Conducting comprehensive due diligence can be a daunting task, especially if you’ve never negotiated a deal before. So, consider seeking input from an experienced accounting professional.

Reviewing historical performance

For starters, the target company’s historical financial statements must be reviewed. This will help you understand the nature of the company’s operations and the types of assets it owns — and the liabilities it owes.

When reviewing historical results, it’s important to evaluate a full business cycle, including any cyclical peaks and troughs. If a seller provides statements during only peak years, there’s a risk that you could overpay.

Historical financial statements also may be used to determine how much to offer the seller. An offer should be based on how much return the business interest is expected to generate. An accounting expert can project expected returns, as well as provide pricing multiples based on real-world comparable transactions.

Evaluating the target’s historical balance sheet also may help you decide whether to structure the deal as a stock purchase (where all assets and liabilities transfer from the seller to the buyer) or as an asset purchase (where the buyer cherry-picks specific assets and liabilities).

Looking to the Future

Prospective financial statements are typically based on management’s expectations for the future. When reviewing these reports, the underlying assumptions must be critically evaluated, especially for start-ups and other businesses where prospective financials serve as the primary basis for your offer price.

It’s also important to consider who prepared the prospective financials. If forecasts or projections are prepared by an outside accountant, do the reports follow the AICPA standards? You may have more confidence when reports provided by the seller conform to these standards. However, it’s a good idea to hire your own expert to perform an independent analysis, because management may have an incentive to paint a rosy picture of financial performance.

Digging deeper

A target company’s historical balance sheet tells you about the company’s tangible assets, acquired intangibles and debts. But some liabilities may not appear on the financial statements. An accounting expert can help you identify unrecorded liabilities, such as:

•Pending lawsuits and regulatory audits, •Warranty and insurance claims, •Uncollectible accounts receivable, and •Underfunded pensions.
You also need to be skeptical of representations the seller makes to seal a deal. Misrepresentations that are found after closing can lead to expensive legal battles. An earnout provision or escrow account can be used to reduce the risk that the deal won’t pan out as the seller claimed it would.

Avoiding M&A mishaps

Do-it-yourself acquisitions can lead to costly mistakes. In addition to evaluating historical and prospective financial statements, we can help identify potential hidden liabilities and misrepresentations, as well as prepare independent forecasts and projections. We also can help you determine the optimal offer price and deal terms based on an objective review of the target’s historical, prospective and unreported financial information.

© 2019

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How Do Profits and Cash Flow Differ?

Business owners sometimes mistakenly equate profits with cash flow. Here’s how this can lead to surprises when managing day-to-day operations — and why many profitable companies experience cash shortages.

Working capital

Profits are closely related to taxable income. Reported at the bottom of your company’s income statement, they’re essentially the result of revenue less the cost of goods sold and other operating expenses incurred in the accounting period.

Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) require companies to “match” costs and expenses to the period in which revenue is recognized. Under accrual-basis accounting, it doesn’t necessarily matter when you receive payments from customers or when you pay expenses.

For example, inventory sitting in a warehouse or retail store can’t be deducted — even though it may have been long paid for (or financed). The expense hits your income statement only when an item is sold or used. Your inventory account contains many cash outflows that are waiting to be expensed.

Other working capital accounts — such as accounts receivable, accrued expenses and trade payables — also represent a difference between the timing of cash flows. As your business grows and prepares for increasing future sales, you invest more in working capital, which temporarily depletes cash.

The reverse also may be true. That is, a mature business may be a “cash cow” that generates ample cash, despite reporting lackluster profits.

Capital expenditures, loan payments and more

Working capital tells only part of the story. Your income statement also includes depreciation and amortization, which are noncash expenses. And it excludes changes in fixed assets, bank financing and owners’ capital accounts, which affect cash that’s on hand.

To illustrate: Suppose your company uses tax depreciation schedules for book purposes. In 2018, you purchased new equipment to take advantage of the expanded Section 179 and bonus depreciation allowances. The entire purchase price of these items was deducted from profits in 2018. However, these purchases were financed with debt. So, actual cash outflows from the investments in 2018 were minimal.

In 2019, your business will make loan payments that will reduce the amount of cash in the company’s checking account. But your profits will be hit with only the interest expense (not the amount of principal that’s being repaid). Plus, there will be no “basis” left in the 2018 purchases to depreciate in 2019. These circumstances will artificially boost profits in 2019, without a proportionate increase in cash.

Look beyond profits

It’s imperative for business owners and management to understand why profits and cash flow may not sync. If your profitable business has insufficient cash on hand to pay employees, suppliers, lenders or even the IRS, contact us to discuss ways to more effectively manage the cash flow cycle.

© 2019

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4 Ideas for Fostering a Partnership Between Internal and External Auditors

External audits aren’t required for every business. But whether required or not, they can provide lenders and investors with assurance that your financial statements are free from material misstatement and prepared in accordance with U.S. Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP).

How can you help facilitate efficient, timely audit fieldwork? The keys are frequent communication and coordination between a company’s internal audit department and its external audit firm throughout the year. Here are four ways to foster this partnership.

1. Encourage frequent communication

Scheduling regular meetings between members of the internal and external audit teams sets the stage for a more efficient audit process. You might discuss emerging issues, such as how the company intends to apply a new accounting standard or the status of internal control remediation efforts.

In preparation for an audit, auditors can meet to compare the internal audit department’s workplan to the external auditor’s audit plan. This comparison can help minimize duplication of effort and identify areas where the teams might work together — or at least complement each other’s efforts.

2. Provide access to internal audit reports

The external audit team can’t rely exclusively on the internal audit department’s reports to plan their audit. But sharing in-house findings provides the external audit with a bird’s-eye view of the company’s operations, including high-risk areas that deserve special attention.

Designate an individual on your internal audit team to act as liaison with external auditors. He or she should be charged with sharing reports in a timely manner. This gives external auditors adequate time to review in-house reports and avoids hasty decision making.

3. Help external auditors navigate the organization

During fieldwork, external auditors need access to employees, executives and data dispersed throughout the enterprise. Internal auditors can share key documents compiled during their audit procedures.

Examples include the company’s organization charts, copies of audit reports from previous years, and a schedule of unresolved internal control deficiencies. This information helps educate external auditors and identifies employees to interview during audit inquiries.

4. Conduct joint training sessions

Both internal and external audit teams require continuing professional education (CPE) to maintain their licenses and improve their understanding of issues they might encounter during an audit. For example, training sessions might explain new accounting standards, emerging fraud scams and technology-driven auditing methods.

Joint training sessions help auditors share best practices and forge lasting bonds with members of the other audit team. Plus, it might be more cost-effective for internal and external auditors to share the fixed costs of providing CPE courses.

Win-win situation

These four ideas are just a starting point. Let’s brainstorm additional ways to foster collaboration between your internal audit department and our external auditors. This exercise will allow both teams to improve efficiency and increase the likelihood of producing timely, accurate financial statements.

© 2019

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Time to Celebrate! FASB Expands VIE Exception for Private Companies

The Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) recently gave private companies long-awaited relief from one of the most complicated aspects of financial reporting — consolidation of variable interest entities (VIEs). Here are the details.

Old rules

Accounting Standards Codification (ASC) Topic 810, Consolidation, was designed to prevent companies from hiding liabilities in off-balance sheet vehicles. It requires businesses to report on their balance sheets holdings they have in other entities when they have a controlling financial interest in those entities.

For years, the decision to consolidate was based largely on whether a business had majority voting rights in a related legal entity. In 2003, in the wake of the Enron scandal, the FASB amended the standard to beef up the guidelines on when to consolidate.

New rules

The updated standard introduced the concept of VIEs. Under the VIE guidance, a business has a controlling financial interest when it has:

  • The power to direct the activities that most significantly affect an entity’s economic performance,
  • The right to receive significant benefits from the entity, and
  • The obligation to absorb losses from the entity.

Private companies contend that some of their most common business relationships could be considered VIEs under ASC 810. These relationships are set up for tax or estate planning purposes — not to trick investors or pump up stock prices.

Private company alternative

Private companies told the FASB that the VIE model forced them to consolidate multiple affiliated and subsidiary businesses onto a parent’s balance sheet. This frustrated lenders and creditors, who wanted cleaner balance sheets. In addition, in companies where ownership is shared among close relatives, determining who holds the power may not always be clear.

In 2014, the FASB issued an updated standard that let private companies ignore the VIE guidance for certain leasing transactions. Private companies applauded this update, but problems persisted with the consolidation guidance for transactions that didn’t involve leases.

So this past October, the FASB issued Accounting Standards Update (ASU) No. 2018-17, Consolidation (Topic 810): Targeted Improvements to Related Party Guidance for Variable Interest Entities, which expands the exception to include all private company VIEs. However, a private company that makes use of the latest amendments to Topic 810 must disclose in its financial statements its involvement with, and exposure to, the legal entity under common control.

Right for you?

The amendments in ASU No. 2018-17 are effective for private companies for fiscal years beginning after December 15, 2020, and interim periods within fiscal years beginning after December 15, 2021. Early adoption is permitted. Contact us to determine whether this election makes sense for your business — and, if so, when you should adopt the simplified alternative.

© 2018

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Conducting an Effective Post – M&A Audit

So, you’re about to merge with another company. What’s next? The integration process typically starts with audited financial statements that reflect the results and financial position of the combined entity. This exercise requires a close partnership between the external audit team and in-house accounting personnel from both companies. Collaboration is key to a seamless transition.

Prepare the audit team

It’s important to notify your audit team about M&A plans long before a transaction takes place — even if there’s still a chance the deal might fall through. This gives the audit team time to pull specialists together who can help you generate timely, accurate postacquisition financial statements.

For example, you’ll need someone with experience applying the business combination rules under U.S. Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) and tax experts who know the rules for reporting different types of deal structures under today’s federal and state tax rules. Likewise, if you’re acquiring a company that uses different accounting systems, you’ll need someone who’s familiar with the acquired company’s software, especially if it’s no longer supported by the vendor.

Anticipate auditor needs

Even if your team of specialists has been assembled in advance, once you’ve merged, expect audit fieldwork to take more time than usual. The auditors will review documents associated with the merger, such as due diligence workpapers and legal documents governing the purchase. They’ll also ask to review prior financial statements and audit reports for the acquired company.

The audit partner might even ask to review board minutes discussing the acquisition, as well as minutes from meetings conducted by the team responsible for the integration of the newly acquired entity.

Documents don’t tell the full story, however. The audit team will interview key members of your team, such as accounting personnel and members of the due diligence team. To streamline the process, designate an employee to serve as the audit liaison. He or she will be the primary point of contact to gather your auditor’s requests for information and access to company employees and executives.

Contact us

M&As provide opportunities to enhance your company’s value. But it’s hard to gauge the relative success of a transaction without reliable, timely financial statements. Our auditors can help you allocate the purchase price to acquired assets and liabilities and otherwise report combined financial results in accordance with U.S. GAAP.

© 2018

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How to Prepare for Year-End Physical Inventory Counts

As year end approaches, it’s time for calendar-year entities to perform physical inventory counts. This activity is more than a compliance chore. Proactive companies see it as an opportunity to improve operational efficiency.

Inventory basics

Under U.S. Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP), inventory is recorded at the lower of cost or market value. There are three types of inventory:

  1. Raw materials,
  2. Work-in-progress, and
  3. Finished goods.

Estimating the value of inventory may involve subjective judgment calls, especially if your company converts raw materials into finished goods available for sale. The value of work-in-progress inventory can be especially hard to assess, because it includes overhead allocations and, in some cases, may require percentage-of-completion assessments.

Physical counts

A physical inventory count gives a snapshot of how much inventory your company has on hand at year end. For example, a manufacturing plant might need to count what’s on its warehouse shelves, on the shop floor and shipping dock, on consignment, at the repair shop, at remote or public warehouses, and in transit from suppliers and between company locations.

Before counting starts, you should consider:

  • Ordering or creating prenumbered tags that identify the part number and location and leave space to add the quantity and person who performed the count,
  • Conducting a dry run a few days before the count to identify any potential roadblocks and determine how many workers to schedule,
  • Assigning two-person teams to count inventory to minimize errors and fraud,
  • Carving the location into “count zones” to ensure full coverage and avoid duplication of efforts,
  • Writing off any unsalable or obsolete items, and
  • Precounting and bagging slow-moving items.

It’s essential that business operations “freeze” while the count takes place. Usually, inventory is counted during off-hours to minimize the disruption to business operations.

Auditor’s role

If your company issues audited financial statements, one or more members of your external audit team will be present during your physical inventory count. They aren’t there to help you count inventory. Instead, they’ll observe the procedures, review written inventory processes, evaluate internal controls over inventory, and perform independent counts to compare to your inventory listing and counts made by your employees.

Be ready to provide auditors with invoices and shipping/receiving reports. They review these documents to evaluate cutoff procedures for year-end deliveries and confirm the values reported on your inventory listing.

Making counts count

When it comes to physical inventory counts, our auditors have seen the best (and worst) practices over the years. For more information on how to perform an effective inventory count, contact us before year end.

© 2018

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Can a PTO Contribution Arrangement Help Your Employees and Your Business?

As the year winds to a close, most businesses see employees taking a lot of vacation time. After all, it’s the holiday season, and workers want to enjoy it. Some businesses, however, find themselves particularly short-staffed in December because they don’t allow unused paid time off (PTO) to be rolled over to the new year, or they allow only very limited rollovers.

There are good business reasons to limit PTO rollovers. Fortunately, there’s a way to reduce the year-end PTO vortex without having to allow unlimited rollovers: a PTO contribution arrangement.

Retirement saving with a twist

A PTO contribution arrangement allows employees with unused vacation hours to elect to convert them to retirement plan contributions. If the plan has a 401(k) feature, it can treat these amounts as a pretax benefit, similar to normal employee deferrals. Alternatively, the plan can treat the amounts as employer profit sharing, converting excess PTO amounts to employer contributions.

This can be appealing to any employees who end up with a lot of PTO left at the end of the year and don’t want to lose it. But it can be especially valued by employees who are concerned about their level of retirement saving or who simply value money more than time off of work.

Good for the business

Of course the biggest benefit to your business may simply be that it’s easier to ensure you have sufficient staffing at the end of the year. But you could reap that same benefit by allowing PTO rollovers (or, if you allow some rollover, increasing the rollover limit).

A PTO contribution arrangement can be a better option than increasing the number of days employees can roll over. Why? Larger rollover limits can result in employees building up large balances that create a significant liability on your books.

Also, a PTO contribution arrangement might help you improve recruiting and retention, because of its appeal to employees who want to save more for retirement or don’t care about having a lot of PTO.

Set-up is simple

To offer a PTO contribution arrangement, simply amend your retirement plan. However, you must still follow the plan document’s eligibility, vesting, rollover, distribution and loan terms. Additional rules apply.

Have questions about PTO contribution arrangements? Contact us. We can help you assess whether such an arrangement would make sense for your business.

© 2018

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4 Steps to Auditing AP

At most companies, the accounts payable (AP) department handles an enormous volume of transactions. So, the AP ledger may be prone to errors or used to bury fraudulent journal entries. How do auditors get a handle on AP? They use four key procedures to evaluate whether this account is free from “material misstatement” and compliant with U.S. Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP).

1. Examination of SOPs

Standard operating procedures (SOPs) are critical to a properly functioning AP department. However, some companies haven’t written formal SOPs — and others don’t always follow the SOPs they’ve created.

If SOPs exist, the audit team reviews them in detail. They also test a sample of transactions to determine whether payables personnel follow them.

If the AP department hasn’t created SOPs — or if existing SOPs don’t reflect what’s happening in the department — the audit team will temporarily stop fieldwork. Auditors will resume testing once the AP department has issued formal SOPs or updated them as needed.

2. Analysis of paper trails

Auditors use the term “vouching” to refer to the process of tracking a transaction from inception to completion. Analyzing this paper trail requires auditors to review original source documents, such as:

  • Purchase orders,
  • Vendor invoices,
  • Journal entries for AP and inventory, and
  • Bank records.

The audit team may select transactions randomly, as well as based on a transaction’s magnitude or frequency. They’ll also ascertain whether the company has complied with invoice terms and received the appropriate discounts.

3. Confirmations

Auditors may send forms to the company’s vendors asking them to “confirm” the balance owed. Confirmations can either:

  • Include the amount due based on the company’s accounting records, or
  • Leave the balance blank and ask the vendor to complete it.

If the amount confirmed by the vendor doesn’t match the amount recorded in the AP ledger, the audit team will note the exception and inquire about the reason. Unresolved discrepancies may require additional testing procedures and could even be cause for a qualified or adverse audit opinion, depending on the size and nature of the discrepancy.

4. Verification of financial statements

Auditors compare the amounts recorded in the company financial statements to the records maintained by the AP department. This includes reviewing the month-end close process to ensure that items are posted in the correct accounting period (the period in which expenses are incurred).

Auditors also review the process for identifying and recording related-party transactions. And they search for vendor invoices paid with cash and unrecorded liabilities involving goods or services received but yet not processed for payment.

Get it right

These four procedures may be conducted as part of a routine financial statement audit — or you may decide to hire an auditor to specifically target the AP department. Either way, your payables personnel can help streamline fieldwork by having the formal SOPs in place and source documents ready when the audit team arrives. Contact us for more information about what to expect during the coming audit season.

© 2018

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Audit Opinions: How Your Financial Statements Measure Up

Audit opinions differ depending on the information available, financial viability, errors discovered during audit procedures and other limiting factors. The type of opinion your auditor issues tells stakeholders whether you’re in compliance with accounting rules and likely to continue operating as a going concern.

The basics

To find out what type of audit opinion you’ve received, scan the first page of your financial statements. Known as the “audit opinion letter,” this is where your auditor states whether the financial statements are fairly presented in all material respects, compliant with Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) and free from material misstatement. But the opinion doesn’t constitute an endorsement or evaluation of the company’s financial results.

Most audit opinion letters consist of three paragraphs. The introductory paragraph identifies the company, accounting period and auditor’s responsibilities. The second discusses the scope of work performed. The third paragraph contains the audit opinion.

In general, there are four types of audit opinions, ranked from most to least desirable.

1. Unqualified. A clean “unqualified” opinion is the most common (and desirable). Here the auditor states that the company’s financial condition, position and operations are fairly presented in the financial statements.

2. Qualified. The auditor expresses a qualified opinion if the financial statements appear to contain a small deviation from GAAP, but are otherwise fairly presented. To illustrate: An auditor will “qualify” his or her opinion if a borrower incorrectly estimates warranty expense, but the exception doesn’t affect the rest of the financial statements.

Qualified opinions are also given if the company’s management limits the scope of audit procedures. For example, a qualified opinion may result if you deny the auditor access to a warehouse to observe year-end inventory counts.

3. Adverse. When an auditor issues an adverse opinion, there are material exceptions to GAAP that affect the financial statements as a whole. Here the auditor indicates that the financial statements aren’t presented fairly. Typically, an adverse opinion letter contains a fourth paragraph that outlines these exceptions.

4. Disclaimer. Even more alarming to lenders and investors is a disclaimer opinion. Disclaimers occur when an auditor gives up midaudit. Reasons for disclaimers may include significant scope limitations, material doubt about the company’s going-concern status and uncertainties within the subject company itself. A disclaimer opinion letter briefly outlines the auditor’s reasons for throwing in the towel.

Ready, set, audit

Before fieldwork starts for the audit of your 2018 financial statements, let’s discuss any foreseeable scope limitations and possible deviations from GAAP. Depending on the situation, we may be able to recommend corrective actions and help you proactively communicate with stakeholders about the reasons for a less-than-perfect audit opinion.

© 2018