Financial 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., ho ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Accountancy
Accounting, also known as accountancy, is the measurement, processing, and communication of financial and non financial information about economic entities such as businesses and corporations. Accounting, which has been called the "language of business", 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 as synonyms. 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; and management accounting focuses on the measurement, an ... [...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; see Earnings call. 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 stock market in valuing the corporation, and helps prevent overvaluation. According to Investopedia, 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 ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Center For Audit Quality
Center or centre may refer to: Mathematics *Center (geometry), the middle of an object * Center (algebra), used in various contexts ** Center (group theory) ** Center (ring theory) * Graph center, the set of all vertices of minimum eccentricity Places United States * Centre, Alabama * Center, Colorado * Center, Georgia * Center, Indiana * Center, Jay County, Indiana * Center, Warrick County, Indiana * Center, Kentucky * Center, Missouri * Center, Nebraska * Center, North Dakota * Centre County, Pennsylvania * Center, Portland, Oregon * Center, Texas * Center, Washington * Center, Outagamie County, Wisconsin * Center, Rock County, Wisconsin **Center (community), Wisconsin *Center Township (other) *Centre Township (other) *Centre Avenue (other) *Center Hill (other) Other countries * Centre region, Hainaut, Belgium * Centre Region, Burkina Faso * Centre Region (Cameroon) * Centre-Val de Loire, formerly Centre, France * Centre (department), H ... [...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 order to ensure more accurate financial reporting to increase investor confidence. This same concept is applied in the discussion of fraud deterrence. Until recently, fraud deterrence has not been specifically identified under one common definition. While it has been discussed by many authoritative sources such as the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICP ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Change Management
Change management (sometimes abbreviated as CM) is a collective term for all approaches to prepare, support, and help individuals, teams, and organizations in making organizational change. It includes methods that redirect or redefine the use of resources, business process, budget allocations, or other modes of operation that significantly change a company or organization. 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 growing number of universities with research units dedicated to the study of organizational cha ... [...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 techniques ... [...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 i ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Fixed Asset
A fixed asset, 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. Fixed assets are different from current assets, such as cash or bank accounts, because the latter are liquid assets. 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 one of two types: * "Freehold Assets" – assets which are purchased with legal right of ownership and used, and * "Leasehold Assets" – assets used by owner without legal ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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SOX 404 Top-down Risk Assessment
Sox most often refers to: * Boston Red Sox, an MLB team * Chicago White Sox, an MLB team * An alternate spelling of socks Sox may also refer to: Places * SOX, Sogamoso Airport's IATA airport code, an airport in Colombia Computing and technology * SOX (operating system), a UNIX clone developed in Brazil in 1980s * SoX or Sound eXchange, a computer program for audio manipulation * Schema for Object-Oriented XML, an XML schema language * Singapore Open Exchange, or SOX * Simple Outline XML, an alternative XML syntax Finance and law * PHLX Semiconductor Sector, a widely used stock market index * Sarbanes–Oxley Act of 2002, a United States federal securities law Sports and related topics * Black Sox Scandal, a 1919 baseball match fixing incident * Bowie Baysox, a US minor league baseball team * Bristol White Sox, a US minor league baseball team * Butler BlueSox, playing in the Prospect League * Chicago White Sox, an American baseball team * Colorado Springs Sky Sox, a US mi ... [...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 public companies and other issuers in order to protect the interests of investors and further the public interest in the preparation of informative, accurate and independent audit reports. 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 SE ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |