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Internal Control
Internal control, as defined by accounting and auditing, is a process for assuring of an organization's objectives in operational effectiveness and efficiency, reliable financial reporting, and compliance with laws, regulations and policies. A broad concept, internal control involves everything that controls risks to an organization. It is a means by which an organization's resources are directed, monitored, and measured. It plays an important role in detecting and preventing fraud and protecting the organization's resources, both physical (e.g., machinery and property) and intangible (e.g., reputation or intellectual property such as trademarks). At the organizational level, internal control objectives relate to the reliability of financial reporting, timely feedback on the achievement of operational or strategic goals, and compliance with laws and regulations. At the specific transaction level, internal controls refers to the actions taken to achieve a specific objective (e.g., h ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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Accountancy
Accounting, also known as accountancy, is the process of recording and processing information about economic entities, such as businesses and corporations. Accounting measures the results of an organization's economic activities and conveys this information to a variety of stakeholders, including investors, creditors, management, and regulators. Practitioners of accounting are known as accountants. The terms "accounting" and " financial reporting" are often used interchangeably. Accounting can be divided into several fields including financial accounting, management accounting, tax accounting and cost accounting. Financial accounting focuses on the reporting of an organization's financial information, including the preparation of financial statements, to the external users of the information, such as investors, regulators and suppliers. Management accounting focuses on the measurement, analysis and reporting of information for internal use by management to enhance bu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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Earnings Guidance
In financial reporting, earnings guidance or simply guidance is a publicly traded corporation's official prediction of its own near-future profit or loss, stated as an amount of money per share. Earnings guidance is usually a financial forecast presented as a quarterly report of the corporation's performance in the next quarter. Guidance is an aid to financial analysts and the stakeholders in valuing the corporation, and helps prevent overvaluation. Guidance refers to Information that a company provides as an indication or estimate of its future earnings. Guidance reports estimating a company's future earnings have some influence over analyst stock ratings and investor decisions to buy, hold, or sell the security. In the United States, a quarterly revenue forecast, or quarterly guidance, by publicly traded companies had become by the 2000s both a common practice (75% of American firms in 2003) and a major influence on the firm's share price. By the 2010s, the quarterly guidan ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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Chief Audit Executive
The chief audit executive (CAE), director of audit, director of internal audit, auditor general, or controller general is a high-level independent corporate executive (management), executive with overall responsibility for internal audit. Publicly traded corporations typically have an internal audit department, led by a chief audit executive ("CAE") who reports functionally to the audit committee of the board of directors, with administrative reporting to the chief executive officer. The profession is unregulated, though there are a number of international standard setting bodies, an example of which is the Institute of Internal Auditors ("IIA"). The IIA has established Standards for the Professional Practice of Internal Auditing and has over 150,000 members representing 165 countries, including approximately 65,000 Certified Internal Auditors. The CAE is intrinsically an independent function; otherwise it may become dysfunctional and of low quality (but there are many degrees ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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Fraud Deterrence
Fraud deterrence has gained public recognition and spotlight since the 2002 inception of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. Of the many reforms enacted through Sarbanes-Oxley, one major goal was to regain public confidence in the reliability of financial markets in the wake of corporate scandals such as Enron, WorldCom and Waste Management. Section 404 of Sarbanes Oxley mandated that public companies have an independent Audit of internal controls over financial reporting. In essence, the intent of the U.S. Congress in passing the Sarbanes Oxley Act was attempting to proactively deter financial misrepresentation (Fraud In law, fraud is intent (law), intentional deception to deprive a victim of a legal right or to gain from a victim unlawfully or unfairly. Fraud can violate Civil law (common law), civil law (e.g., a fraud victim may sue the fraud perpetrato ...) in order to ensure more accurate financial reporting to increase investor confidence. This same concept is applied in the d ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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Change Management
Change management (CM) is a discipline that focuses on managing changes within an organization. Change management involves implementing approaches to prepare and support individuals, teams, and leaders in making organizational change. Change management is useful when organizations are considering major changes such as restructure, redirecting or redefining resources, updating or refining business process and systems, or introducing or updating digital technology. Organizational change management (OCM) considers the full organization and what needs to change, while change management may be used solely to refer to how people and teams are affected by such organizational transition. It deals with many different disciplines, from behavioral and social sciences to information technology and business solutions. As change management becomes more necessary in the business cycle of organizations, it is beginning to be taught as its own academic discipline at universities. There are a gro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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Key Performance Indicators
A performance indicator or key performance indicator (KPI) is a type of performance measurement. KPIs evaluate the success of an organization or of a particular activity (such as projects, programs, products and other initiatives) in which it engages. KPIs provide a focus for strategic and operational improvement, create an analytical basis for decision making and help focus attention on what matters most. Often success is simply the repeated, periodic achievement of some levels of operational goal (e.g. zero defects, 10/10 customer satisfaction), and sometimes success is defined in terms of making progress toward strategic goals. Accordingly, choosing the right KPIs relies upon a good understanding of what is important to the organization. What is deemed important often depends on the department measuring the performance – e.g. the KPIs useful to finance will differ from the KPIs assigned to sales. Since there is a need to understand well what is important, various technique ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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Separation Of Duties
Separation of duties (SoD), also known as segregation of duties, is the concept of having more than one person required to complete a task. It is an administrative control used by organisations to prevent fraud, sabotage, theft, misuse of information, and other security compromises. In the political realm, it is known as the separation of powers, as can be seen in democracies where the government is separated into three independent branches: a legislature, an executive, and a judiciary. General description Separation of duties is a key concept of internal controls. Increased protection from fraud and errors must be balanced with the increased cost/effort required. In essence, SoD implements an appropriate level of checks and balances upon the activities of individuals. R. A. Botha and J. H. P. Eloff in the ''IBM Systems Journal'' describe SoD as follows. Separation of duty, as a security principle, has as its primary objective the prevention of fraud and errors. This objective ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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Fixed Asset
Fixed assets (also known as long-lived assets or property, plant and equipment; PP&E) is a term used in accounting for assets and property that may not easily be converted into cash. They are contrasted with current assets, such as cash, bank accounts, and short-term debts receivable. In most cases, only tangible assets are referred to as fixed. While IAS 16 (International Accounting Standard) does not define the term ''fixed asset'', it is often colloquially considered a synonym for property, plant and equipment. According to IAS 16.6, property, plant and equipment are tangible items that: (a) are held for use in the production or supply of goods or services, for rental to others, or for administrative purposes and (b) are expected to be used during more than one period. Fixed assets are of two types: * those which are purchased with legal right of ownership (in the case of property, known as ''freehold assets''), and * those for which the owner has temporary ownership ri ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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Public Company Accounting Oversight Board
The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) is a nonprofit corporation created by the Sarbanes–Oxley Act of 2002 to oversee the audits of US-listed public companies. The PCAOB also oversees the audits of broker-dealers, including compliance reports filed pursuant to federal securities laws, to promote investor protection. All PCAOB rules and standards must be approved by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Purpose In creating the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB), the Sarbanes-Oxley Act required that auditors of U.S. public companies be subject to external and independent oversight for the first time in history. Previously, the profession was self-regulated. Congress vested the PCAOB with expanded oversight authority over the audits of brokers and dealers registered with the SEC in 2010 through the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. The PCAOB has four primary functions in overseeing these auditors: registr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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American Institute Of Certified Public Accountants
The American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) is the national professional organization of Certified Public Accountants (CPAs) in the United States, with more than 428,000 members in 130 countries. Founded in 1887 as the American Association of Public Accountants (AAPA), the organization sets ethical standards and U.S. auditing standards. It also develops and grades the Uniform CPA Examination. AICPA is headquartered in Durham, North Carolina, and maintains additional offices in New York City, Washington, D.C., and Ewing, New Jersey. History AICPA and its predecessors date back to 1887, when the ''American Association of Public Accountants'' (AAPA) was formed. The Association went through several name changes over the years: the Institute of Public Accountants (1916), the American Institute of Accountants (1917), and the American Society of Public Accountants (1921), which merged into the American Institute of Accountants in 1936. At that time, the decision ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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SSAE No
Statement on Standards for Attestation Engagements no. 16 (SSAE 16) is an auditing standard for service organizations, produced by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) Auditing Standards Board, which supersedes Statement on Auditing Standards no. 70 (SAS 70) and has been superseded by SSAE No. 18. The "service auditor’s examination" of SAS 70 is replaced by a '' System and Organization Controls'' (SOC) report. SSAE 16 was issued in April 2010, and became effective in June 2011. Many organizations that followed SAS 70 have now shifted to SSAE 16. Some service organizations use the SSAE 16 report status to show they are more capable, and also encourage their prospective end-users to make having an SSAE 16 a standard part of new vendor selection criteria. SSAE 16 mirrors the International Standard on Assurance Engagements (ISAE) 3402. Similarly, SSAE 16 has two different kinds of reports. A SOC 1 Type 1 r ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |