Taking the long view

Those are two contrasting findings from a recent CFO Research study, “CFOs on Managing Finance Technology.” Another conclusion from the study: the executives want to measure the value that their financial systems will provide far into the future, and they aren’t necessarily concerned about bein...

By Keith Button • June 10, 2013

Cloud buyers need an education

Everest Group points to those concerns as evidence that buyers seem to be overestimating the challenges of public cloud adoption, and that cloud providers should do a better job at educating buyers. Everest Group conducted its survey this spring, polling cloud buyers, cloud service providers and...

By Keith Button • June 10, 2013

Explore the Trendline➔

Top 5 stories from CFO.com

From CPA licensure changes to undergoing a digital transformation, these are the most popular stories CFOs are reading. 

By CFO.com staff

Survey: Cloud is key to success

The June 15th issue of CFO Magazine reports on the survey, pointing out that 89 percent of those polled stated that mobile devices would be the most important technology for their company’s success within the next three years.Cloud-based services appeal to small companies because their pay-as-you...

By Keith Button • June 10, 2013

CFO One-on-One: Craig Stack of ProKarma

.cfo360link {text-decoration:none;font-size:13px; line-height:16px;color:#000001 !important;}CFO One-on-One: Craig Stack of ProKarmaCFO Radar:Talent Management Shifts to the CloudAcademic Outlook:Copyleft in the CloudCompany Spotlight:Zixcorp  Craig Stack wasn...

By Ed Zwirn • June 4, 2013

Frozen budgets push CIOs to outside technologies

According to Gartner’s polling of more than 2,000 CIOs in the fourth quarter of last year: “When asked which digital technologies would be most disruptive, 70 percent of CIOs cited mobile technologies, followed by big data/analytics at 55 percent, social media at 54 percent and public cloud at 5...

By Keith Button • June 3, 2013

SICA Credits Encourage Jobs and Innovation

Lawmakers in Washington may not see eye to eye on much these days, but outside of Washington most individuals as well as CFOs and other senior executives would agree that the U.S. economy needs to create more jobs. Fortunately, a bipartisan proposal has emerged that would go a long way toward ach...

By Dean Zerbe and Dhaval Jadav • June 3, 2013

Welcome to the CFO Application Services Learning Center

On this site, you’ll find timely, useful, interesting articles and research about cloud-based services for businesses, along with the problems and benefits they create. At the learning center, we’ll shed light on the management, cost and security issues that businesses are grappling with in the h...

By Keith Button • May 31, 2013

How Depreciation Can Hurt the Economy

A new study of tax treatment of capital assets explains that depreciation, a common accounting method used to calculate the cost of equipment and machinery in financial statements, understates the cost of the assets being acquired and results in a tax system that reduces capital—meaning it hurts ...

By Kathy Hoffelder • May 31, 2013

Riding the cloud to IT budget cuts

In the report, more than half of the IT leaders surveyed say that owning IT infrastructure is a waste of resources. Less than half of them believed that two years ago.Those IT leaders are also looking to cut their IT budgets with the help of outsourcing and the cloud.Read the report at http://www...

By Keith Button • May 30, 2013

The cloud’s capability is forcing changes on application developers

So, Mikos says, the applications designed for the cloud are inherently different than the software that runs on corporate servers—they have to be, to take advantage of the cloud capabilities.  In the old days, software was unreliable and hardware was resilient. Now, hardware is the weak link a...

By Keith Button • May 30, 2013

Medical-Device Makers Get Tax Reprieves

Finance chiefs of medical-device manufacturers required to file their next quarterly excise-tax returns by July 31 should be breathing a tad easier at the moment because of a tax-friendly interim guidance by the Internal Revenue Service that had become effective in January. While manufacturers an...

By Kathy Hoffelder • May 29, 2013

New Guidelines Could Help Deter Fraud

CFOs and their staffs could gain some mental clarity about how to apply internal controls more effectively in the form of a guidance document released last week, its framers think. Their intent, after all, is to provide more practical details than the framework it replaces. The Internal Control-I...

By Kathy Hoffelder • May 21, 2013

Gartner Sees Cloud Services Brokers on the Rise

That’s according to Gartner Inc., the helpful technology consulting firm with legions of analysts, in its “Top 10 Technology Trends, 2013: Cloud Computing and Hybrid IT Drive Future IT Models” (subscription may be required). Gartner describes how the role of large-company IT departments will chan...

By Keith Button • May 16, 2013

Top Audit Deficiency: Evidence Collection

Among 87 cases where the Securities and Exchange Commission investigated fraudulent financial reporting that led to sanctions against auditors from 1998 to 2010, the failure to gather “sufficient competent audit evidence” was the top audit deficiency, a new report reveals.The study analyzes the r...

By Kathy Hoffelder • May 10, 2013

New Hires: A Skills-and-Demand Balancing Act

This is the second of three articles in a special report on accounting and finance skills. The other articles look at what qualities are most needed among accounting and finance staff in the U.S. and abroad: Accountants Need to Show Their Softer Side and Non-U.S. CFOs Donning Green Eyeshades.Gene...

By Kathy Hoffelder • May 7, 2013

SMEs To Be Hit by Internet Sales Tax

The new internet sales tax that seems ready to pass the Senate May 6 is likely to bring operational challenges as well as burdensome tax collecting responsibilities to CFOs and their staffs at small and medium size retailers.That’s because the bill, called the Marketplace Fairness Act, requires t...

By Kathy Hoffelder • May 2, 2013

Let Your Auditor Do Your Taxes, Investors Say

Although many corporations use their audit firm to perform tax services, the practice runs counter to regulators’ professed preference for maintaining auditor independence. New research, however, shows that investors welcome the practice “because insight learned from providing tax services can en...

By Kathy Hoffelder • April 26, 2013

FASB Chooses Insider as New Chairman

The Financial Accounting Foundation (FAF), overseer of the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB), chose FASB board member and former staff member Russell G. Golden to be its next chairman. He will replace Leslie Seidman, whose second term expires in June. Golden, whose term starts on July 1...

By Kathy Hoffelder • April 23, 2013

Growing Companies Need Internal-Controls Help

CFOs and their staffs who have put off on updating their internal controls until new guidelines are released may find out they have a lot more work to do. That’s especially so for finance folks who work for small and medium size entities (SMEs), which tend to have fewer resources than their peers...

By Kristine Brands • April 16, 2013

Grant Thornton Gains on Big Four in Workplace Rankings

Grant Thornton, traditionally among the second tier of accounting firms behind the Big Four that dominate the profession, is catching up to its larger brethren in terms of its desirability as a workplace.A new ranking released today from career internet site Vault.com shows that Grant Thornton to...

By Kathy Hoffelder • April 15, 2013

Fair-Value Rule Seeks Clearer M&A Deals

In his desire to take Dell private, billionaire founder and CEO Michael Dell agreed in February to value his stake of more than 15% in the company at a lower share price than other shareholders. Hoping that would make the deal more attractive to potential suitors, he valued Dell at $13.65 a share...

By Kathy Hoffelder • April 5, 2013

IRS Audits: Passivity Is the Worst Approach

Every tax professional understands that Internal Revenue Service audits can often be challenging experiences–and sometimes unpleasant and long-lasting ones. That is particularly true for small and mid-size businesses because such companies’ bookkeeping methods vary widely, which makes it hard and...

By Walter Harris • April 1, 2013

Four Ways to Become a Better Borrower

The Great Recession forced many small and midsize businesses to make tough decisions in order to survive. In almost all industries, businesses underwent significant operational changes that had long-term effects on the competitive landscape, materially altering their prospects. Lenders have been ...

By George D. Shaw • March 26, 2013

Ways and Means Proposes Permanent Break for Small Biz

The divide between big and small business seems to grow more dramatic by the day.Even as the Duke University/CFO Magazine Global Business Outlook Survey reports that on average, “U.S. finance chiefs expect to increase their capital spending” in the next 12 months, the National Federation of Indep...

By David Rosenbaum • March 21, 2013

Accounting Watchdog Raps Small Audit Firms

In February, the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board released a new report summarizing inspections of small U.S. audit firms. While the number of significant audit deficiencies at these firms has shrunk since the PCAOB issued its previous report on this group in 2007, the auditing overseer ...

By Kathy Hoffelder • March 21, 2013