As we mentioned in the prelims, today is Martin Luther King, Jr. Day and we’re assuming that nearly all of you are serving clients today as opposed to enjoying a day off observing the holiday as you see fit.
While it may cause some bellyaching among the newbies, the more seasoned of you have come to accept the fact that because it’s busy season, you are expected to work today.
So let this function as the sounding board for your frustration or acceptance of working today while many are not. Since we’re feeling nostalgic, we’ll hang in there with you today (as long as possible anyway).
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Huron Consulting Beats the Numbers, Cooked Books and a Bunch of Other Shadiness Notwithstanding
If you’re an accountant and you see a company’s name in the same sentence as “accounting irregularities”, “alleged cooking of the books”, or “SEC investigation”, your likely advice to any person would be to run away from said company like it was a band of lepers.
This is just conventional wisdom, nothing ground breaking. However, since Huron Consulting reported big second quarter numbers, the stock price is up more than 30%.
Now some of this is short sellers getting burned but according to one analyst quoted by Reuters, some investors may be going long because of “confidence in the underlying business”.
We’re not too crazy about the “underlying business” for a lot of reasons:
1. The Company said in a filing that they are likely going to take a goodwill impairment charge that will put it in noncompliance with a financial covenant of its credit agreement.
2. It’s worried about “‘reputational issues’ that may affect the company’s ability to retain its senior managers and attract new talent and new business”.
3. Can’t predict the outcome of the SEC investigations or private lawsuits (P. Dubya take note).
4. They warned that their current numbers may not be legit since the new management has no idea what the hell else is out there in the way of kickbacks payments made to Huron Management, questionable allocated billable hours (but don’t worry, this won’t affect client billings) or anything else for that matter that may call for another restatement of its results.
5. The whole Arthur Andersen connection creeps people out.
Far be it from us to speculate on a company’s future but this place seems doomed. We might just listen to tomorrow’s earnings call to see if there’s anything worth mentioning but in the meantime, put your money in…WTFK?
Huron Consulting fights to stay alive [Greg Burns/Chicago Tribune]
CPAs Can Be Heros Too
CPAs clients’ have high expectations. Not only do you have to provide timely, exceptional service, you never know when your client might go off the deep end. And we’re talking your typical, frantic phone call, going off the deep end. We’re dealing with ‘My life is over, I can’t go on’ deep end:
[Barry] Schimel recounted how one of his clients was suicidal, so they spent 10 hours driving around talking about the clients’ problems until he got the client back home and safe. He believes the job of the accountant is to make the client successful and more profitable. “Your role is to turn obstacles into an opportunity for clients,” he said.
Not only does Schimel have clients that are in personal distress, he also has some that got the short end of the stick in the smarts department:
Another client was a trash-hauling company that didn’t know it was being charged extra at the dumping station because its drivers remained inside their trucks while the load was being weighed. Once Schimel’s firm pointed this out, the supervisors soon made sure their drivers got out of their trucks, lightening the scales.
This Schimel guy might be our personal hero. A CPA that literally saves lives and doesn’t rub their clients noses in shit when they do something stupid. Who knew this was even possible? Young CPAs, this is your idol.
How to Be a Hero to Clients [Web CPA Debits & Credits]