If you have ever wondered whether accountants care about a company’s numbers, then read on. Karen was the accountant for a client of mine. She had twenty years of experience, starting as the receptionist and working her way up to become an indispensable part of the team. She was quiet and dependable, keeping the invoicing and payroll systems going through changes in legislation, system problems and people’s comings and goings. That is, unless you tried ‘pulling a fast one’. If a salesperson tried getting some of next month’s sales recorded in this month for bonus purposes, she had a way of ma ..read more

The woman beside me and I were reviewing the financial planning report and looking at the travel expenses entered in their General Ledger (GL) and in my report. They didn’t match. My financial planning report was in a different format than their Ledger and I pointed out that if we reorganized the cost centres in the GL to match the reporting format, she wouldn’t have to do so much reconciliation. “That’s true,” she said, “But they keep changing their minds about what they want.” Then she corrected herself. “Actually, they have been pretty consistent since they started that three-year plan.” A ..read more

How much time do YOU spend doing financial reporting?  For many organizations, the simple answer is “too much”.  As a consultant, much of my time is spent helping companies with their financial reporting system for: Results analysis and forecasting by management, Oversight by the Board, Regulatory requirements imposed by government, and Project and program To help in these areas, I have been using some powerful packages, which, however, all suffer from the same financial reporting system weakness: Jet Reports, http://www.jetreports.com/ca/ Management Reporter, http://www.microsoft.com/dynamics ..read more