FASB Change Could Trim Intangibles Tests

A new proposal from the Financial Accounting Standards Board may save companies some third-party costs involving gauging the fair value of intangible assets.The change would give companies more flexibility in how they determine whether certain assets need to be tested for impairment. Similar to a...

By Sarah Johnson • Feb. 2, 2012

Will Amazon Burn Through Its Cash?

Retailing giant Amazon.com continues to grow revenue by large amounts. But its operating margin and free-cash-flow metrics are worsening, raising questions about the sustainability of the company’s growth and its investment strategy.Amazon’s fourth-quarter revenue grew 35%, to $17.4 billion. But ...

By Vincent Ryan • Feb. 1, 2012

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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

The Cost of Confidence

If CFOs had any doubt about whom the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board serves, the audit watchdog spells it out in big capital letters at the top of its Website: PCAOB OVERSEES THE AUDITORS OF COMPANIES TO PROTECT INVESTORS.In other words, the board doesn’t see itself as primarily serving...

By David Katz • Feb. 1, 2012

Imagine There’s No Excel

Even the people selling business analytics (BA), business intelligence (BI), and financial planning and analysis (FP&A) software — jobs traditionally performed through Excel — sing Excel’s praises. And why not? In a 2011 study, accounting and tax advisory WeiserMazars found that 87% of the CF...

By David Rosenbaum • Jan. 18, 2012

How Health Reform Helps Treasury Cut Losses

While most financial executives are elbows-deep in compiling their 10-Ks right now, the Treasury Department delivered its latest annual report to Congress and the President just before Christmas, thanks to a September 30 fiscal year-end.The numbers are just about as depressing as you might expect...

By Alix Stuart • Jan. 17, 2012

Senate Subcommittee Opposes Private-Company GAAP

The concept of generally accepted accounting principles for private companies has generated controversy every time it has surfaced over the past 35 years. Now, with the Financial Accounting Foundation’s proposal to create a Private Company Standards Improvement Council within the Financial Accoun...

By Alix Stuart • Jan. 13, 2012

Excel Cure for Hospitals Works for All Monte Carlo Modeling

Dr. James B. sent in this week’s question. James works in a hospital cardiac unit and wants to do some Monte-Carlo simulations on hospital census statistics. He wants to generate two random columns, one with admission date and one with discharge date. He tried using RANDBETWEEN in both columns, b...

By Bill Jelen • Dec. 1, 2011

A Loss of Independents?

As companies make greater use of independent contractors, the Internal Revenue Service is pushing to get many of those self-employed workers reclassified as employees.For some workers, being an independent contractor offers freedom and a sense of entrepreneurship. For others, it’s simply a fallba...

By David Katz • Dec. 1, 2011

Is the Cloud on a Collision Course with Your Balance Sheet?

Companies are moving at a rapid clip toward adopting cloud-computing processes, including infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS), which allows them to outsource their IT departments to third parties. IaaS frees companies from buying and maintaining servers for applications, storage, and networking an...

By Marielle Segarra • Nov. 30, 2011

Cutting Costs Out of the Last Audit Mile

The good news: audit fees are flat. The bad news? Given the economy, flat may not be enough in light of increasingly complex audits that portend an increase in fees.To be sure, recent moves by the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board to impose term limits on audit firms and prod auditors to ...

By Mary Driscoll • Nov. 28, 2011

Free Cash Profiles: The Transportation Industry

In many industries, the companies best built for cash-generating growth are middle-market companies. Such companies tend to be more streamlined than the giants and thus have fewer assets to fund. At the same time, midmarket companies can leverage more market power with their suppliers and buyers ...

By David Katz • Nov. 18, 2011

Why the CFO Title Needs a Marketing Campaign

Dhananjay “DJ” Nanda studies finance executives at both ends of their careers. As a managerial accounting professor in the University of Miami’s MBA program, he works daily with the next generation; in his research, he examines how and why executives get fired. One of his recent projects found th...

By Alix Stuart • Nov. 17, 2011

Embedding a PDF in an Excel Worksheet

Reader Tony L. wins a copy of Learn Excel 2007-2010 from MrExcel for his question: “I need to embed a PDF file in an Excel spreadsheet and send it to several coworkers. I want them to be able to open the PDF by clicking on it.”Amazingly, Excel supports embedding PDF files in a worksheet, although...

By Bill Jelen • Nov. 16, 2011

Two Steps Back from Global Accounting?

Firing back against a Securities and Exchange Commission proposal to slash the Financial Accounting Standards Board’s authority in setting accounting standards, FASB’s parent organization has proposed a system that puts the standards board still squarely at the helm.Further, in contrast to the go...

By David Katz • Nov. 16, 2011

No ‘Write’ Rights? You Can Still Customize Excel Views

Jordan wins a copy of Excel Outside the Box for this week’s question: “I have a shared workbook with other co-workers.  I only need certain columns in the middle of the spreadsheet. I am using the read version because I don’t update the spreadsheet. Even after I deleted the 50 columns to the righ...

By Bill Jelen • Nov. 2, 2011

The Goodwill Two-Step

Prompted by private companies, the Financial Accounting Standards Board is offering all corporations a way to sidestep the complex two-step dance required to test for goodwill impairment. But will the new option required to avoid the test spawn added costs for some companies and spur anxieties am...

By David Katz • Nov. 1, 2011

FASB as Private-Company Standards-Setter?

Launching itself into the teeth of a controversy, the Financial Accounting Foundation recently proposed a structure for setting private-company accounting rules that would position the Financial Accounting Standards Board as “the ultimate standards-setter,” in the words of Teresa S. Polley, FAF p...

By David Katz • Nov. 1, 2011

Desperately Seeking Excel Spreadsheet Links

Cindy T. wins a copy of Excel Outside the Box from CFO and MrExcel.com for her question, “Is there a way to find out if anything in a spreadsheet is linked to another spreadsheet or workbook?”Finding Links to other WorkbooksIt is actually easier to detect if something in a worksheet is linked to ...

By Bill Jelen • Oct. 26, 2011

Honey, I Shrunk the Scroll-Bar Slider in Excel

Editor’s Note: If you would like Bill Jelen to answer your Excel question in an upcoming column, post a question at the Community Center on the right or send an e-mail note to [email protected]. If Bill selects your question to use in an upcoming column, you’ll win one of his Excel books as a tha...

By Bill Jelen • Oct. 5, 2011

FASB Should Rule Private-Company Accounting, Proposal Says

Launching itself into the teeth of a controversy, the Financial Accounting Foundation today proposed a structure for setting private-company accounting rules that would position the Financial Accounting Standards Board as “the ultimate standard setter,” in the words of Teresa S. Polley, FAF presi...

By David Katz • Oct. 4, 2011

Making Audits More Audible

The succinctness of an audit opinion belies the many hours of review, reconciliations, and judgments that are required for an auditor to produce it. Despite all that work, the public audit opinion ultimately amounts to little more than a thumbs up or down regarding whether a company’s numbers are...

By Sarah Johnson • Oct. 1, 2011

Goodwill Shortcut Could Spark Auditor Jitters

Prompted by private companies, the Financial Accounting Standards Board is offering all corporations a way to sidestep the complex two-step dance required to test for goodwill impairment. But will the new option required to avoid the test spawn added costs for some companies and spur anxieties am...

By David Katz • Sept. 28, 2011

Free Cash Profiles: The Computer Hardware Industry

Computer users are always on the lookout for upgrades of their desktops and laptops. The technology sector as a whole is one of the few buoyant areas of the economy. Household names abound: Apple, Hewlett-Packard, Dell, and more.You don’t have to look beyond those facts for an explanation of why ...

By David Katz • Sept. 7, 2011

Looking in the Mouth of the Gift Card

Gift cards are the gift of the era. Last year, shoppers spent nearly $25 billion on cards of all kinds, from traditional stored value and promotional cards to loyalty, rebate, electronic, and e-cards. In fact, forget Zhu Zhu Pets or Tickle Me Elmo: gift cards have been the most popular holiday gi...

By Russ Banham • Sept. 1, 2011

Comparability: Still Up in the Air?

New York certified public accountants claim there are “critical unresolved differences” between U.S. generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) and international financial reporting standards (IFRS), and the disparity is contributing to a lack of comparability between the two rule sets. As a...

By Marie Leone • Sept. 1, 2011