Author: Adrienne Gonzalez

Adrienne is a 15-year veteran of the accounting industry, if by "veteran" you mean "vulture prowling the periphery of the profession waiting for something exciting to happen." She has been spewing vitriol on Going Concern since the site was founded in 2009. A former CPA review employee, she has sat through more FAR classes than any CPA exam candidate ever could -- even one who has failed FAR seven times -- and can still recall most of the mnemonics all these years later.

The Overworked SEC Makes Time To Entertain Teenagers

If there were candy involved in this, it might be considered creepy.

The SEC hosted a shadowing event at its Washington, DC HQ yesterday (what, no invite for AG?) as well as a few regional offices to show high school students interested in finance just how cool the SEC is and how much fun it is to work for a [dot]gov in the business of protecting investors or whatever it is the SEC purports to do these days.


Participating students are involved in the Academy of Finance, one of five career-themed academies that are part of the National Academy Foundation (NAF). More than 250 students are visiting SEC offices this week in Washington, Atlanta, Boston, Denver, Los Angeles, Miami, Philadelphia, Salt Lake City, and San Francisco. The kids will hear from SEC Commissioners Elisse Walter and Troy Paredes and other SEC leaders in group discussions, and are then paired with an SEC professional to observe the workday. SEC staff members from various divisions and offices volunteered to be shadowed and, according to the press release, “are enjoying the opportunity to explain their work and interact with America’s next generation of financial professionals.”

“By shadowing an SEC employee for the day, students can learn about the SEC’s mission on behalf of investors and the work that we do on a daily basis to achieve it,” said Kathy Floyd, a Deputy Director in the SEC’s Office of Investor Education and Advocacy. “We hope to pique the students’ interest as they consider their own potential career paths in the financial services industry or in public service at an agency like the SEC.”

JD Hoye, President of the National Academy Foundation, added, “The National Academy Foundation provides students with experiences that allow them to see the real world applications of what they are learning in school and hone the skills necessary to excel in their careers. Through our partnership with the SEC, students gain a window into an important part of the financial industry, underscoring the relevance of their class work and exposing them to possible career paths.”

The shadowing program helps the SEC meet objectives in Section 342 of the Dodd-Frank Act, which calls for federal financial regulators to seek diversity in their workforce at all levels and, where feasible, to partner with inner-city high schools, girls’ high schools, and high schools with primarily minority populations to establish or enhance financial literacy programs and provide mentoring. Funny, I don’t think any of the dreadlocked teenagers that hang out on my corner are all that interested in finance and accounting beyond the math required to figure out how many 8ths are in an ounce but whatever, good for them.

It’s important to start them young. Way to go, SEC.

The Definitive Number of Hours to Study For One Section of the CPA Exam Is… 445 Hours?

Over the years, I’ve generally suggested to CPA exam candidates that they should spend 2 – 3 hours studying homework per hour of review lecture they watch, which means most candidates will spend about 300 – 400 hours total studying for all four sections. That formula must not be too terrible as it somehow helped thousands of future CPAs find success. Of course, not all CPA exam candidates are created equal and some need more while some need less.

So when I was trolling the CPAnet forums last night and came across a thread entitled “The definitive number of hours to study,” I definitely had to check it out. Maybe things have changed since I walked away from CPA review forever, gotta keep up with what the kids are doing.

I’ve seen many posts that ask how many hours to study. I’ve come up with the following guidelines that I believe determine the amount of time to devote. I’m using Becker with Wiley for supplemental questions, so I’ll use them as a basis. I’m studying for REG, so I’ll use that as an example.

First, watching each video takes about four hours each. Seven videos times four hours is 28 hours. Second, reading each chapter is mandatory. Each chapter should take 6 hours each, if it is read carefully and slowly. So 6 hours times 7 chapters is another 42 hours. For each question, I think you need an average of fifteen minutes each. This includes understanding everything in it, reading the textbook for information regarding that question, and doing each one three times. Between Becker and Wiley, there might be 1500 questions. 1500 questions at 15 minutes each comes to 375 hours.

The grand total is 28 + 42 + 375 = 445 hours.

Is that too much? Probably….but I bet if you follow those guidelines, you’ll pass.

OK, hold the fuck up. 445 hours? For Regulation?!

It would take a full 30 days of studying for nearly 15 hours a day to meet that. And who on Earth has that kind of time? Besides, your brain turns off after the first 3 or 4 hours of a constant task (unless that task happens to be playing hooky with the one you love in bed all day or Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3), so studying any more than 4 hours at a time a day is pretty much useless – this is explained by the crash many of us feel at work around 2pm.

While it is important for candidates to know their own study ability enough to figure out how much time they actually need to study for the exam, 445 hours is DEFINITELY overdoing it. It should never take 6 hours to read one chapter of a review book, even if you are a slow reader and need a lot of time to actually comprehend the material. This is why most review courses advise their students to watch the videos first and then read the chapters, you should have enough of a base after watching the video to get the concepts. And while it might be a good idea to spend 15 minutes on each question you get wrong, it should not take you 15 minutes to review the answers for each question. In fact, you’re smart to do time drills that allow 30 – 45 seconds per MCQ so you can train yourself to breeze through them on the actual exam.

Will you pass if you study for 445 hours? Probably. But you can also pass if you study for 90 hours, so why overdo it four times over?!

Has an Auditor Ever Been Whacked For Snitching on Fraudsters?

I’ve gotten some crazy questions over the years but this one pretty much takes the cake. I’m not saying it’s stupid, nor am I saying it’s all that crazy, it’s just… well… out there, is all. Read on.

Dear Adrienne,

I’m a college student at the University of North Texas. Fraud has been a hot topic in my courses this month. We covered many scandals including Crazy Eddie, Barry Minkow, NextCard, Enron, and Bernie Madoff. This has got me thinking a lot about how I would react if I was in the shoes of the auditor. The students in my class always say to just report the fraud, however they never put themselves in the shoes of the fraudster to determine how the fraudster would act nor do they think about protecting the reputation o watched enough movies to know that if a fraudster finds out that somebody knows “too much,” then that person probably won’t make it home alive that night, unless they cooperate. I remember in that movie, “The Other Guys,” the auditing partner got killed because the fraudsters didn’t want him snitching out any information to authorities.

Another thing is that if it is found out that a partner is involved in fraud, this will ruin the firm’s reputation if this gets reported to the SEC. However, if the firm handles this internally, fire the partner, admit mistake, and let the public know that it doesn’t want anything to do with the partner, then perhaps only the partner would get in trouble and not the firm.

So exactly how are you suppose to act in situations of fraud? Of course AICPA tells us to first report it to your supervisor, then to the audit committee, and then the SEC. But still though, you got to get this out before someone kills you and you’ve got to handle it in a manner that best protects the reputation of the firm. Am I right? Also, have you ever heard of any auditors that were murdered because they knew too much? When you read about Enron or the Bernie Madoff scandal, there are talks about death threats, but you don’t necessarily hear about any murders involved. So it may be something that only happens in the movies.

Well, since you brought up Crazy Eddie, my first instinct was to pose this question to Crazy Eddie’s corrupt CPA, Sam Antar. Thankfully Sam obviously checks his Twitter account every five minutes and had some thoughts for me almost immediately.

“Yes, the potential is there. Depends on the client. Have that person contact me if worried,” he tweeted. Now isn’t that sweet? If anyone out there is feeling the heat, you know who to hit up.

His thought? It’s rare, if not impossible. Why would a fraudster whack the auditor? By the time the fraud is uncovered, it’s too late. The workpapers would likely document said fraud, so the fraudster would then be forced to whack the entire chain on up to the partner and who has time to do all that killing? “No logic in whacking outside auditor unless part of conspiracy,” Sam said.

That being said, does anyone remember Allen Stanford’s sketchy auditor C.A.S. Hewlett (“C.A.S.H.” get it?!)? He apparently kicked the bucket on January 1st (a real accountant would have kicked the bucket on December 31st, pfft), just a month before Stanford was charged with fraud (though he didn’t get arrested until June of that year). The circumstances surrounding his death were, uh, weird to say the least but I don’t think anyone is going to go so far as to say he got whacked.

Or how about Ken Lay? I mean, does anyone really believe he had a heart attack? There is even an entire website dedicated to exposing Ken Lay’s post-mortem life.

Now, here’s where it gets tricky, and I don’t expect you to know this since you haven’t made it out into the real world yet. What is an auditor’s job? Is it to uncover fraud? Or is it to verify with a minimum of certainty (a.k.a. “reasonable assurance”) that the financial information presented by a company is probably legit? If you answered the latter, you win. Forensic accountants dissect fraud, auditors simply check boxes. I’m sorry if this offends any of you hardcore auditors out there but in your hearts, even you guys know I’m right. Auditing is a joke, an intricate dance (read: performance) that exists more for entertainment than functionality. If you don’t agree with me, I’d be happy to name any number of companies that prove my point for me (let’s see… Enron, Worldcom, Overstock, Satyam, Olympus…).

What do you think the odds are that a first or second year auditor would even be able to detect fraud? Don’t you think the criminals behind it are at least clever enough to hide their wrongdoing from a bunch of fresh-faced kids with their SALY checklists? Look at the lengths Crazy Eddie went to – to success until their greed got the best of them and a chick ruined the whole scam. And that’s the thing, the auditors rarely uncover fraud, it’s usually the fraudsters themselves who end up exposing themselves though greed or just plain stupidity.

Whistleblowers don’t make friends but they don’t have to hire armed guards either. Like I said, by the time the fraud is exposed, it’s too late to start killing people to hide the truth.

And thanks to SOX, it is illegal to “discharge, demote, suspend, threaten, harass or in any manner discriminate against” whistleblowers, so a more likely scenario is that revelations of fraud will come from within the firm, not from the outside auditors who are pissed off to be doing inventory counts on New Year’s Day.

You watch too many movies, kiddo. Just check the list, collect the bank recs and call it a day.

Former Swinging Salzberg Soldier Sentenced to 11 Months in Prison For Insider Trading

Former Salzberg Soldier and San Francisco housewife Annabel McClellan – who we know as the wife of former Deloitte tax partner Arnold McClellan – was sentenced in federal court yesterday to 11 months in prison for lying to a regulatory agency about slipping insider trading tips to her sister and brother-in-law. McClellan pleaded guilty in April to one count of obstructing and due administration of the law after she made false statements to SEC investigators in 2009.

U.S. District Judge William Alsup handed down the sentence. In her plea, McClellan admitted to eavesdropping on hubby’s conversations about corporate transactions and lying under oath to SEC investigators. Prosecutors guesstimate that McClellan’s naughty behavior defrauded British investors of about $3.05 million.

We are unclear at this time if Annabel will resume her business ventures – like the My Nookie app – upon her release from prison. She should certainly have some experience sistering up with strangers by that point, which can only help her swinger aspirations, unless her soon-to-be prison girlfriend insists on monogamy.

San Francisco housewife sentenced for obstructing insider trading probe [SJ Mercury News]

Big 4 Wanna-Be Who’d Even Settle For BDO Just Can’t Get a Break

Ed. note: While we can’t go rough up recruiters on your behalf, we’re happy to give you advice on how to make them do your bidding for you. Get in touch, we’ll put our team of trained monkeys on your problem right away. Also, I apologize in advance for the length of this letter.

Good evening Adrienne,

I’m a senior at the University of Michigan due to graduate in 2012 with a double major in accounting & finance with over 150 credits. I recently went through the recruiting process at the University to try and land an internship and I happened to land a couple.

My issue here is that I didn’t get any internships with any of the firms that I was really looking forward to interning with GM, Chrysler, another Fortune 500 corporation, Baker Tilly, Plante Moran, and another regional public accounting firm. My favorites which were Plante Moran and Baker Tilly didn’t seem to like my performance at the interviews and so I never heard back from them. But I did get offers from the regional public accounting firm for a winter and summer internship with a large Fortune 500 corporation that I did accept.

The reasons why I did not perform well during my first few interviews was because it was my first time having job interviews of this sort and so I was unprepared. I have since had numerous mock interviews with family and friends and I am now very good at interviewing, but I feel that it is a little too late because the damage has already been done, all of the firms have already gone through the recruiting process at our University.

I did apply for PwC, Deloitte, and E&Y early on but I never heard back from them. KPMG does not recruit at our campus. I thought that I was a very solid candidate with an overall GPA over 3.8 and a 4.0 accounting GPA which I have maintained while holding a part time job throughout my college career. I think the area where I am lacking is the volunteering department but I have been active in Beta Alpha Psi which I do volunteer work through. I have participated in programs such as Junior Achievement amongst others. I would have done a lot more volunteer work but I am the oldest child from a single parent home. We have 5 younger children in our family whom I help my mother take care of (if you’re wondering where our father is, I am too; we haven’t heard from him since 2001)!

My dream is to work for a Big 4 firm but I am having a hard time landing any interviews with them. Considering that I will be interning with a regional this winter and a large corporate firm during the summer of 2012, do you think I will ever break into the Big 4? They say that once you start working for a regional firm, it is extremely tough to move up into a larger firm such as one of the Big 6. I have worked very hard over the past 4 years and I feel that I deserve it, but I understand that I am not entitled to it just because I have worked hard up to this point. If it is at all possible to break into the Big 4, do you have any advice on how I should go about doing so considering that I will be graduating soon? I only have about 4 classes left before I graduate so I won’t be in school for that much longer.

The regional accounting firm is a great firm but I just don’t feel like it would be a good fit for me. I’m not ungrateful, I do realize that there are hundreds of students in the same position that I’m in who interviewed with numerous firms and didn’t get a single offer. I’m happy that I got 2 offers from different firms. I just feel that I would be much happier with either a Big 4 firm or maybe even BDO or Grant Thornton. Can you give me any advice about breaking into any one of these firms?

Also, I feel that since I didn’t do well at the interviews with Plante Moran and Baker Tilly which are 2 very highly regarded firms, I will never be able to work for these firms in the future. Do you think I have a chance of redeeming myself with them? What advice do can you give a person such as myself?

In case anyone finds this to be TL;DR, I’ll save you a few minutes and sum up the predicament: soon to graduate, 3.8 GPA, flopped Plante Moran and Baker Tilly interviews and wants to get into the Big 4, BAD. You’re welcome.

Anyway, I have to admit I’m a little stumped. On paper, you sound great. High GPA, u spell gud, Junior Achievement and BAP experience, able to express yourself… wait a minute, maybe that’s it. You know how to express yourself.

I’m going to go way out here and wonder out loud if your lack of success with the firms you want centers around the fact that you have a pretty good idea of what you want. You probably also have opinions you are not afraid to express. You realize that scares the crap out of firms looking for a blank, unquestioning canvas they can mold into their own private workhorse, right? You use words like “I feel,” which you are not allowed to do when you work for the Big 4. I kid. Kind of.

Your point about being unprepared for interviews should serve as a lesson to the junior accounting students out there reading this: interview skills are critical for landing a gig in public before you leave school. Anyone who actually works in a public accounting office can confirm that you don’t even have to be much of a step above completely awkward to get the job, you just have to know how to shine at an interview.

Are you doomed forever? Doubtful. There is not some master list the firms share amongst themselves that brands you as a loser for the entirety of your life in public.

My suggestion to you would be to fast track the CPA exam as having that done will definitely make you more marketable. Also make sure you are discoverable to recruiters by having a strong LinkedIn presence once you have some work experience under your belt, and try to do as much networking as possible both online and in the real world; any professional events you might be able to sneak off to will allow you to make personal impressions with those in positions you are working toward.

In the meantime, try not to feel too butthurt about the regional firm gig (try this discussion earlier about mid-size firm opportunities). On the bright side, you actually got an internship, so use it.

Can anyone else help this guy out? I’m kind of stuck for ideas.

VIDEO: The Cash Count Rap

What happens when you combine two rapping accountants from Alabama and Auto-Tune? Well, this.

Cash Count is the brain child of Tyler Crawford (“T Dub”) and AJ VanderWoude (“VanderHood”), who work for the curiously named Barfield Murphy Shank & Smith in Birmingham, AL. Working for a guy named Shank, I guess it’s no surprise these guys roll hard.

Well… as hard as you can in a tie, that is.

Accounting News Roundup: Accounting Scandal Fan Porn; Financial Institution Accounting Blows; FASB Works on Non-Profits | 11.11.11

Programming note: Most of you are working so you probably don’t realize it but today is technically a holiday, therefore we will resume The Daily Grind on Monday and run a shorter editorial schedule today. Caleb returns to your loving embrace Monday morning, so thanks to all of you for a great week, it’s been fun. – AG

PwC’s LGBT employees coming to Dallas for summit [Dallas Voice]
Human Rights Campaign sponsor PricewaterhouseCoopers is holding a two-day diversity summit for members of its LGBT resource group at the Joule Hotel in Downtown Dallas beginning Friday, Nov. 11, in conjunction with Black Tie Dinner st.

Financial Scandal Fans Never Had It So Good: Jonathan Weil [Bloomberg]
If you happen to be a connoisseur of accounting scandals, then the past month or so has been about as good as it gets, capped by the unfolding disaster at Olympus Corp. (7733) On the flip side, if you work as an auditor for a big accounting firm, it just got that much harder to make the case that society should value your services.

Green Mountain’s Landslide [WSJ]
Consider Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, whose shares tumbled 39% after the single-serving coffee company said revenue increased “only” 91% against expectations of around 100%. The trouble: While the shortfall was modest, many Green Mountain investors simply can’t remember being disappointed. And the perfect performance had led them always to give Green Mountain the benefit of the doubt.

Distortions In Baffling Financial Statements [NYT]
This has been a bad year for banks. With sovereign debt no longer trusted and widespread fears of a new recession in Europe, share prices of banks have fallen sharply. But in some cases, the financial statements look ever so much rosier. JPMorgan Chase reported net income of $15.3 billion during the first three quarters of this year, 22 percent higher than in the period a year earlier and a record for the first nine months of any year. There are explanations for that — and JPMorgan Chase deserves praise for calling attention to reasons to think the numbers are misleading. But at base the problem is a simple one: Accounting for financial institutions is a mess.

Audit: IRS responded well to deadly Austin incident [The Hill]
The IRS responded competently and efficiently after a man flew a plane into Austin, Texas, offices of the agency, a new report found. The Treasury Department’s inspector general for tax administration found that the IRS was able to resume work in Austin within 18 days of the February 2010 incident, and had ensured that taxpayer data and IRS employees were protected.

FASB Chairman Adds Two Agenda Projects to Improve Financial Reporting by Not-for-Profit Organizations [MarketWatch]
Leslie F. Seidman, chairman of the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB), today announced the addition of two agenda projects–a standard-setting project and a research project–intended to improve financial reporting of not-for-profit organizations. The objectives of these projects encompass suggestions received by the Board from its Not-for-Profit Advisory Committee at the Committee’s September 2011 meeting.

Ex-accountants ‘drained tax avoidance scheme of cash’ [The Guardian]
Two former Vantis accountants and ex-tax officials faked documents to siphon money out of tax avoidance schemes marketed to well-known and wealthy individuals, a court heard. Robert “Roy” Faichney and David Perrin, alongside their wives Shirley Faichney and Nicola Perrin, manufactured a series of bogus documents to allow the payment of huge sums from the companies involved in the scheme to a Jersey trust, it was alleged.

Thoughts On How Much Your Facebook Page Sucks From an HR Manager

Remember yesterday when we talked about LinkedIn? Sure you do, it just happened. Anyway, the discussion prompted one HR manager to reach out to me with related thoughts on Facebook. Keep in mind this person is directly in charge of hiring at an unnamed mid-size firm that, as far as I am aware, treats its staff pretty well (great culture, competitive salary, CPA exam support, etc). I suggest those of you looking for work pay close attention to the following.

Reading GC again this morning. I can never tell if this behavior is an indication of job engagement or apathy. Nonetheless, the inquiry about LinkedIn sparked some reallypful dialogue. It caused me to think about what I perceive as much needed guidance on Facebook.

I know you field a lot of inquiries from those who aspire to be slave laborers CPAs. I think these folks are missing out on the basic do’s and don’ts of Facebook. While I loved the rule “facebook is for the people i enjoy being around and linkedin is for the people i am paid to be around” irresponsible Facebook privacy settings are abundant and makes TMI available to recruiters.

Case in point: I recently learned the name of a student who accepted our offer. I couldn’t recall exactly who he was- give me a break, I speak with hundreds of students- so I typed his name into FB. Not only could I see the profile pic I was looking for, I was able to view all of his albums. I want to rescind the offer after viewing the album of his fraternity trip to Vegas. (And yes, I know that I didn’t have to look, but we don’t have to look at car accidents and we still do.)

Second case: A candidate is coming in to the office for an interview. The staff accountant assigned to take the candidate out to lunch does a name search on Facebook. Before the candidate arrives to the office, the email system is routing pictures of said aspiring CPA in a toga. So much for a first impression that conveys professionalism.

Also, one doesn’t even have to go to Facebook to see these pictures. I have Outlook Social Connector, which integrates Facebook and Outlook. If a person emails me from an email account associated with their Facebook account, guess what: at the bottom of their email message, I can see any information that is public (e.g. their profile picture and wall).

I am sure other professionals and recruiters have similar stories. Can GC give these kids a heads up?

Lord knows we’ve tried.

Doesn’t everyone know recruiters and hiring managers check Facebook? I thought that was common knowledge but maybe not, or maybe people don’t realize that pics of them drinking in Vegas are not as cool to recruiters as they might be to their friends.

A few quick tips:

Make sure your Facebook settings are TOTALLY private and not just lazy private. The broader Facebook privacy setting will only block your wall from strangers but your friends, likes and EVERY SINGLE PICTURE are still out there for others to stalk. Since Facebook privacy settings are subject to change (and do, constantly), it’s your job to stay on top of things and make sure you’re only sharing what you want to share.

Use an email you don’t often use as your Facebook login email. This is common sense. When I was screening interviewees for my last job, I would routinely plug their email addresses in to see who would pop up and, not surprisingly, almost everyone did. Let’s just say a few of them did not get interviews. Gmail is free, there’s no reason not to have a spare for this purpose.

Reconsider your profile picture! True story, one of our CPA exam students emailed me with a sob story about how he had been unable to study for weeks and therefore failed his exam miserably and not only wanted advice on how to pass but free time to study even though he’d used up most of the time on his course. Well he forgot we were also friends on Facebook, so when he popped up in my timeline, I couldn’t help but notice the picture of him partying in Mexico with a half-spilled Corona in his hand. The picture had been uploaded the week before his exam, and was even conveniently captioned with “had a great time last week!” so I knew that he was totally full of shit. While not all cases are that extreme or closely connected, it is important to put your best foot forward on Facebook, at least if you are going to allow strangers to see your profile photo. If you can’t handle using a professional shot for your profile, change your privacy setting so no one but your friends can see it.

I’m sure there are a bunch of things I’m missing here, so if anyone has anything to add, you know what to do.

Wanted: North Dakota Tax Professionals Who Don’t Mind Stilettos And G-Strings

A tipster clues us in to the wild world of one small oil boomtown in North Dakota that’s going to need some pretty open-minded tax pros in town if things keep up:

CNNMoney:

Forget Vegas. Strippers are discovering they can make ten times as much dancing in the oil boomtown of Williston, N.D.

Thousands of men have come here seeking high-paying jobs working for the oil companies. And, at the end of the day (or four or five days when they’re working on a rig), many of them are looking for some female companionship at one of the town’s two strip club’s [sic], Whispers or Heartbreakers.

Word has gotten out about just how much money can be made dancing in Williston’s strip clubs. The money is phenomenal, but the competition is stiff.

Whispers has received applications from exotic dancers in Hawaii, Alaska, even the Czech Republic and Germany, said Melissa Slapnicka, the co-owner of the club. She’s been bombarded with so many applications that she only gives each dancer a week to try out. If they don’t work out, they don’t come back, she said.

According to the article, one 36-year-old stripper (uhh…) who has traveled to Williston for dancing work over the last few years now finds herself making $2000 – $3000 in a single night. I don’t expect you guys to know this but that’s a lot of money for a stripper to make in a single evening.

Even on a slow night, Slapnicka says her girls are bringing home $1500.

Assuming her girls are 1099 employees, looks like there might be an opening for a qualified tax professional willing to help these successful strippers ensure their tax house is in order. Especially now that they’ve been featured in a major media outlet, you can rest assured the Shulman Army has been dispatched to keep an eye on their gains.

Paging The Tax Domme!

Provisional CPA Exam Candidate From Illinois Is Just Now Realizing What “Provisional” Means

I can’t believe it but finally, a CPA exam question I’ve never answered before. I have a feeling our confused candidate already knows the answer but is reaching out in hopes that we’ll tell him what he wants to hear instead of the cold, hard truth. Sorry in advance, bro.

Hello GC,

I just took the FAR section of my CPA exam, I did this while completing my final 9 hours of the 150 hours needed. Therefore, I am considered a provision candidate. From what I have read Illinois will not inform me of my score (is this some sort of sick joke), since I am a provisional student, until my final transcripts are turned into them. The earliest that I will have my final transcripts will be January 2nd. This presents a problem because I was planning on retaking the test if I failed, before I start full time at a big 4 firm on January 3rd. Is there a way around this? What should I do? Should I just enjoy my month break and worry about taking it again after busy season if I did fail? Should I study up again while the information is still fresh?

Also I did fell very prepared taking the test and I would say I am fairly confident that I passed the exam. But who knows until I see the official score.

Sincerely,

Confused

I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news, Confused, but you’re not only confused, you’re screwed on top of it.

According to the Illinois Board of Examiners, provisional candidates have 120 days from the date they take their exam to submit their final transcript to the board. If you miss the 120-day deadline, your exam scores will be voided and you will be ineligible to sit for any sections of the exam until the final transcript is received and you are determined eligible to test. Until your Provisional Status is cleared, you cannot view or receive any exam scores.

What this means to you is that there is nothing you can do until you have those transcripts. I commend you for trying to get a jump on your CPA exam adventure this early in the game but you may have ended up screwing yourself. If you fail, you may have to start studying for that section again from scratch as you’ll likely have forgotten quite a bit by the time you find out you failed. If you pass, your 18 months has started ticking but you’ve lost time waiting around to wrap up school.

And yes, if you failed, wait until you are able to study to attempt again since you don’t have an 18 month window to worry about. No reason running yourself into the ground if you don’t have to.

What’s the lesson to be learned here? Always make reality part of your plan; unless you knew of a trick around this going into it, it was unrealistic to make a plan that you couldn’t actually implement.

Sorry but them’s the breaks.

Will Yelp Give Goldman Sachs and Citigroup 5 Stars For Its IPO?

Fun fact: yours truly used to be a hardcore Yelper, ranked San Francisco’s funniest Yelper for a good year and a half before I gave up and quit the site. God that makes me feel like a loser. As it should.

Anyway, here’s my issue with a Yelp IPO… Yelp should have quit way back when I did. The window of opportunity, in my mind, has long passed. Maybe in 2007 Yelp had a chance to blow it up but how are they even relevant anymore? Beyond the rabid fan base and drive-by Googlers, I’d say no. They blew a Google deal. They totally bit off the foursquare formula when they should have come up with it first. They still don’t have a money-making plan, as far as we can tell.

So here’s the really crazy part: according to DealBook, Yelp has brought on Goldman Sachs and Citigroup to help with its IPO. Did Jeremy S. suffer from brain-eating food poisoning?!

The offering, which is expected to value the company at $1.5 billion to $2 billion, will probably come to market in the first quarter of next year, a person close to the company said. Yelp is expected to file its prospectus by the end of this year.

In recent months, Yelp has openly telegraphed its intention to go public. At a technology conference during the summer, Yelp’s chief executive, Jeremy Stoppelman, said the company was still pursuing an I.P.O. but did not have a set time line. In late July, in a move that many interpreted as another step toward the public markets, the company hired a chief financial officer, Rob Krolik, who helped Shopping.com go public in 2004.

Just last year, Stoppelman said Yelp likely wouldn’t go public for years, while it took $25 million in funding from Bono’s Elevation Partners. Remember, Elevation Partners also bought a 25% stake in Palm – anyone remember them? Anyway, earlier this year, Stoppleman proudly declined additional financing and announced that “an IPO is back on the table” for Yelp.

Fun fact: GS and Citi also worked on Groupon’s IPO, with Goldman serving as one of the lead underwriters.

But Yelp is no Groupon (that might be a good thing). The seven-year-old start-up has yet to prove how it can make money, outside of shaking down companies and forcing them into sponsorships. Oops, did I say that out loud? I meant through “advertising” revenue from sponsoring companies interesting in “creatively shuffling” their negative reviews.

The sad part is Yelp has an extensive team of writers in its users, and they are constantly creating free content (some of them are not too shabby, either) yet it still cannot figure out how to make money off that. What on Earth is an IPO going to change about that?

How One Emotionless CPA Completely Dominated The Penn State Press Conference

U.S. Steel CEO and vice chairman of the Penn State Board of Trustees John Surma spent last night in the hot seat, fielding angry questions from bitter Penn State fans-cum-journalists (read: second year J-schoolers) distraught by this whole scandal nonsense. You see, it fell on his shoulders to announce to the world that the trustees canned head coach Joe Paterno and university president Graham Spanier.

Why do we care? Surma got his BS in accounting from Penn State University in 1976 and started off his career at then Price Waterhouse. He is a member of the AICPA and sits on the Bank of New York Mellon’s board. Therefore, he’s a member of the club.

And he handled last night’s Penn State press conference like a gangster. Even when angry “journalists” attacked.

See? This is why you send a CPA into the lion’s den. An architect would have crumbled. An engineer may have cried. A doctor would have cowered in fear. But a CPA? Stone-faced and calm with zero emotion, just how a Board of Trustees vice chairman should be when announcing a beloved coach has been canned due to, er, questionable discretion. And of course, because CPAs aren’t real big on that whole interaction thing, they called Paterno on the phone to tell him the news. Not a sit down or even coffee, but a phone call.

Told you he was gangsta.

Here’s the video: