FASB plans private company confabs
NORWALK, CONN.
;e Financial Accounting Standards Board
intends to host two public roundtable meetings to solicit input on private company accounting and reporting issues.
;e roundtables are part of a series of such
forums planned for the fall that are designed
to provide interested parties with the opportunity to express their views on various standard-setting issues.
“;e board’s purpose in holding these pub-
lic roundtables is to engage in a constructive
dialogue about private company accounting
and reporting issues with a wide variety of
stakeholders, including private companies,
their CPA practitioners, and users of private
company ;nancial statements,” said FASB
assistant director for nonpublic entities Jef-
frey Mechanick in a statement. “We want to
hear a variety of perspectives on how high-
quality ;nancial reporting can be achieved
while taking into account the speci;c needs
of the private company sector.”
Issues to be discussed at the roundtables
are expected to include, but will not be lim-
ited to, Consolidation (Codi;cation Topic
810, originally issued as FASB Interpreta-
tion 46(R)) and Income Taxes (Codi;cation
Topic 740, originally issued as FASB Inter-
pretation 48). ;e roundtables are sched-
uled as follows:
Tuesday, Oct. 12, from 1:00-4:00 p.m. at
the FASB o;ces in Norwalk; and,
ucts, technology, especially clean technology, and nonpro;ts. ;e Big Four ;rms have
the global and industry expertise, which we
have as well, but they can’t match our part-ner-led service model. ;at’s where we can
capture market share from them,” Chipman
explained.
Over the past year, Grant had closed a series
of o;ces, divested a number of service lines
and reduced its partner headcount. “We made
some tough calls, no doubt,” said Chipman.
“But we feel that allowed us to place a more
signi;cant focus on what we need to do to
achieve our growth objectives.”
At presstime, Chipman also revealed that
the ;rm’s ;rst M&A deal — with an unnamed
advisory ;rm — under the new initiative was
scheduled to close at the end of September. He
said that Grant had not been active in merg-
ers since the shuttering of Arthur Andersen,
but that wasn’t what he termed “traditional
M&A.”
“We won’t do M&A just for M&A’s sake,” he
said. “Our merger partners truly have to be-
lieve that they will be more successful as part
of our organization, than they would be on
their own.” AT
For videos and podcasts of our interview with
Chipman, visit WebCPA.com.
Workflow
FROM PAGE 6
sons and, more recently, Copanion. ;e ;rm
felt so strongly about the use of work;ow for
its 400-plus sta; that it had its I T department
create XCM as the homepage for all users and
locked it so no one at the ;rm could change it.
;is policy will be relaxed in the near future,
but WS+B partner Jim Bourke said that the
message has hit home.
“Work;ow has been very well embraced
here since we placed XCM in everyone’s face
so they had to do it. We are now developing
a new intranet here and that will be the new
home page, where the workflow software
will be found just like with all other software
because that’s what they need to do,” said
Bourke. “A work;ow tool should be in a po-
sition to know where any work product is, not
just a tax document. We came into this digi-
tal world, and so many [;rms] are still using
manual tracking of their work. It just makes
sense to automate it all right now.”
Bourke also noted that since using Copan-
ion in 2009, the ;rm has saved an average of
two hours per return, especially data entry
on complex returns. It also netted $200-$300
more profit per return, on average, across
some 3,000 returns.
Three years ago, the firm began using
Metastorm, a customizable work;ow solution that allowed the ;rm to use SharePoint
— which most of the ;rm was already familiar
with — as the main interface.
“We didn’t want to go with an o;-the-shelf
product, as we wanted something we could
build ;rm-wide. It’s one tool, but we built it so
it works across the ;rm,” said Duane Squire,
director of information systems at EKS&H
“We wanted to have a standard process,
and having ;ve managers with ;ve di;erent
[work;ow] processes wasn’t cutting it,” said
Squire. “We wanted to focus; the market’s
tighter and we needed to become more ef-
;cient. ;is is an evolution that is less about
technology and more about change.” AT
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