Category: News

Will CFO’s Audit Fee Benchmark Tool Help Keep the Big 4 Honest on Fees?

This story is republished from CFOZone, where you’ll find news, analysis and professional networking tools for finance executives.

There’s a bit of a tiff going on over at my former place of employment as a result of the cover story in the latest issue of CFO Magazine on the recent fall in auditor’s fees.

Some critics seem to fear that the phenomenon will be encouraged by a new benchmarking tool the website unveiled on April 1.

For a fee of $1,200, the tool allows companies to compare the fees that their peers pay for auditors. The process should be both quicker and more comprehensive than the requests for proposals now put out by many companies trying to figure out what they should be paying.


Accounting mavens David Albrecht and Lynn Turner, however, seem to worry that such an exercise will lead to the further commoditization of audits, and so to lower quality financial reporting, even though there’s no evidence the increased fees we saw in the wake of the Sarbanes Oxley Act did anything to improve its quality. Lehman Brothers, anyone?

Yet after the article appeared, Turner sent around comments on his list serve saying it contained several “factual inaccuracies” and that “a firm cannot do the same amount of work with these lower fees without seeing a huge reduction in profits.”

One problem here, it seems to me, is that we’re talking about an oligopoly, which invariably skews the normal effects of supply and demand. Albrecht concedes that the industry is an oligopoly but doesn’t make a cogent point about the significance of that. And he misses the other complication, which is that SarBox not only required auditors to review a company’s internal financial controls as well as its financial results, but also prevented auditors from offering audits as loss leaders for their more profitable consulting services. Now auditors can’t offer both services to the same clients. So audits have to stand on their own two feet.

Turner gets this point, though he confuses the chronology of the regulatory events involved. And he seems to suggest the article is flawed in the conclusion it draws about it, without saying how.

Here’s the point. If, in fact, the extra work SarBox required inflated auditors’ profits, why shouldn’t CFOs be able to make sure they’re getting what they pay for?

And the apparent assumption that benchmarking will inevitably lead companies to push for lower fees seems a bit shaky to me. As CFO.com’s editorial director Tim Reason points out, the process may instead merely keep auditors on their toes. Are Albrecht and Turner arguing that opacity is necessary for the public good, so auditors can pad their fees with impunity? Sorry, but that just doesn’t compute.

In an email to me this morning, Tim wrote: “We think finance executives and audit committees will benefit from having an independent, trusted editorial source provide them with a quick way to benchmark their fees-and make sure they are neither too high nor too low.”

Too low? Sure. You get what you pay for.

Tim also points out that there are no advertisers or sponsors for the tool. “It is a pure editorial offering being made directly to our readers, giving them information they’ve been asking us for years.”

Now there’s a radical idea.

Layoff Watch ’10: Grant Thornton’s Cleveland Office Starts Early

From Casa de Chipman:

A manager, a senior III, and senior II were quietly let go yesterday. In addition, the conference rooms are booked for today. I have not heard from other offices, but the Cleveland office appears to be kicking off the race early.


Seems early but our source indicated that these were audit professionals and we’re sure each office has their own method to the madness. Layoffs as this level were also not mentioned by Stephen Chipman during his firm-wide call back in January, although many have indicated that they would be happening regardless.

We left a message with the Cleveland office’s HR but so far we haven’t heard back and GT’s national PR has not responded to our email. If you’ve got an unexpected meeting coming up or have more details, get on the horn.

Live Blogging the Overstock.com Earnings Call

4:57: Everybody ready to do this? We exchanged an email with Sam Antar a little bit ago and he says he never gets on the call so we know he’s listening along. Sam, can’t you get one of those things that will disguise your voice and that makes it sound like your voicebox was removed?

5:00: Slides are working but These Salt Lake City people need to get their act together.

5:02: Jonathan Johnson in the hizzous! Dr. Patrick is in attendance and Steve Chestnut. Yeah, that 10-K was two weeks late, Johnnie. You should probably mention that. Non-GAAP financial measures? You mean the whole 10-K? We kid, we kid.

5:03: Chestnut gets on and he name drops KPMG. Thanks Klynveldians for making this a virtually painless process. Chesty agrees with Patsy’s sentiments that he’s sorry for the delay but appreciates your patience throughout this whole mess.

Oh boy. Accountants getting thrown under the bus. They’re hiring new people though. Ones that have appropriate training in debits and credits. Hell, they’ll throw in some internal audit people too. Progress is being made, make no mistake.


5:07: Patrick Byrne is up! He’s stoked to be here. Going through the numbers and Patsy mentions that Johnnie Johnson never sounds bored while going over the minutiae. “ALL IS GOOD!” Stalling…Skips an entire slide for some reason (probably not important). Pat doesn’t know what the future holds. That’s deep man. He’ll stop talking about the future now. You know who Patrick cares about? The consumers! He’s passing savings on to you, the American people and Overstock shoppers.

5:11: This thing is generating cash, sayeth Chestnut. Jesus, we are cruising through these slides. Think he’s skipping over anything? An investment banker told Patsy that “profit is noble.” He thinks its Chinese or something. Definitely not Nietzsche. Pat likes LL Bean, btw. Johnnie Johnson is back on. Just because LL Bean is a great company doesn’t mean OSTK isn’t going to try like hell to be numero uno in customer satisfaction.

Okay, these guys really like LL Bean. Patrick is talking about duck boots and grandpas now. Really profound stuff here. Did they mention they were above Amazon, Zappos, etc?

5:15: No reason to read slide 13…moving along, moving along. Patrick is reminiscing about someone at Allen & Co. who said something smart at one time in the past. Not really going anywhere…Yes. Please keep up the abrupt stops and starts. Johnnie do you want to chime in? Pat says they have tight expense controls. This must be the one area of the company where controls are just a-okay. $46 million in cash flow is nothing to sneeze at people. Patrick still doesn’t want to talk about the future.

5:19: Questions. Matt Schindler/BofA (sorry if I butchered the spelling): nice revenue number guys. How’d you do it? Great question, sayeth Patrick. Patrick can’t believe this didn’t happen three years ago but hey, whatever. ’09 wasn’t so hot compared to other years because you know, it pretty much sucked for everybody.

What about gross margin? Patsy said that 20% gross margin was too high and was going to give it back to customers? Now it’s 17% WTF? Are you doing customers a favor or did you get hammered by the seasonal whathaveyou? Patsy says that OSTK wants to be cheaper than everybody in the entire universe, so hell yeah, they’re passing it on to the consumer.

5:26: WE ARE NOT TALKING ABOUT THE FUTURE! Do you know what the future holds? We sure as hell don’t but chances are it involves the SEC so we’re not going there. END. OF. STORY.

The book of this company will be written one day and chapter one will be human development. Who will write this book? Patrick? Robby Boyd? Floyd Norris? Good God, when is this BofA guy’s turn over? One final question: Q1 is the past so that’s technically not the future so how is it??

Patrick says that you may have heard that he was in some hot water, so Q1 actually is the future, thankyouverymuch. Next question.

5:30: Patrick’s fraternity brother is next up and they compliment each other for being such swell guys. Patrick especially likes his buddy’s Minnesota accent. Sounds like Johnnie is running the show because Patrick says that he’s the one insisting that Patrick keep his piehole shut about the future.

5:35: Jesus, Marge Gunderson asks another snoozer of a question. Patrick plugs another book that no one has ever heard of called “The Dick” or something.

Marge Gunderson: Any litigation? – Johnnie will handle this. Prime brokers are going down in September of 2011. Byrne can’t help himself and blurts out that the it will be the OJ Simpson trial of the financial world. That’s nice. Murder. The murder of OSTK.

Hey! What about those Q1 earnings?? It’s still TBD but we’re tentatively shooting for late April. KPMG has been burning the midnight oil! Patrick is singing their praises right now. They’re a great crew. Not like the hacks at Grant Thornton. Herculean effort KPMG. Props. Tons of props. Nice job team. No plans for you to be fired.

5:42: Tom O’Halloran from an bank I’ve never heard of. Byrne claims that the OSTK is part of the American psyche now. Coca-Cola, Baseball, and Overstock.com. Steve Chestnut number drops $900 million in revenues. That’s almost a billion! But we’re still kind of small, we’re not delusional. Johnnie knows that Americans see OSTK as a real alternative for stretching their nickel.

Patrick is now talking macro-econ now and we’re totally disinterested. Btw, did you notice that OSTK is the only discounter on the customer satisfaction survey?

5:48: Talking inventory…What about cash levels? You’ve got about $140 mil in cash. Is that enough? What do you like to see in the future?

Patrick says if working capital drops $30 mil they’re in deep shit. Since this involves the future, Johnnie Johnson takes over and Patrick shuts his trap.

5:51: A emailed question from fellow named Nick whose last name is being withheld to protect him. Weird. He wants to know about patent infringements. Jesus, are Sam’s questions going to get asked or not? The Company will fight these tooth and nail. Johnnie will fight these suits dammit. No settlements. It’s about principle, after all.

Michal Ungai (sp?) is up. Something about future depreciation. Patrick asks Johnnie for permission to answer the question, so it must be serious. Are we talking about this?…stand by…If you’re assuming what we are, then you’re good to go.

5:58: Johnnie says time is up so everybody beat it. Patrick says KPMG needs to get the Q1 done and then they can go on vacay. That’s reassuring.

Will Patrick Byrne Answer Sam Antar’s Questions?

Sam probably won’t be getting a real apology so maybe Patrick will answer his questions on the earnings call today? It’s going down in little while and it’s sure to be a do not miss event.

To give you a little preview, Sam Antar provided us with his questions that he submitted to P. Byrne, the Company’s President Jonathan Johnson and Joe Tobacco (independent member of the audit committee). We’ll be live-blogging the call starting at 5 pm EDT to see if these get answered and if anything else exciting happens.

From: Sam E. Antar
To: Patrick Byrne ,
Joseph Tabacco ,
Board – Jonathan Johnson
Date: Mon, Apr 5, 2010 at 2:04 PM
Subject: Overstock.com conference Call Questions

Dear Patrick Byrne:

The following questions are submitted for Overstock.com’s conference call scheduled today. I respectfully request that each question be read aloud in its entirely and that you and Johnson specifically answer each question.

1. Will you admit that I correctly identified GAAP violations by Overstock.com in its accounting treatment for recoveries from underbilled and overpaid fulfillment partners and that the company was dead wrong?

2. Will you admit that I was correct when I properly reported that Overstock.com’s GAAP violations caused the company to report an improper Q4 2008 profit, rather than a properly reported net loss?

3. Will you admit that Overstock.com continued to violate GAAP even after being notified by me of specific GAAP violations?

4. Will you and Jonathan Johnson admit that you made the following false statements to investors?

On February 6, 2009, you responded to my original February 4 blog post identifying specific GAAP violations on the InvestorVillage message board by claiming that:

Antar’s ramblings are gibberish. Show them to any accountant and they will confirm. He has no clue what he is talking about.

On November 18, 2009, during a conference call with analysts and investors, you falsely claimed:

In fact, we as I understand it, this doesn’t change any positive quarter to a negative quarter or any negative quarter to a positive quarter.

In a November 25, 2009 Salt Lake Tribune article, company President Jonathan Johnson was quoted as saying:

None of these changes that they [Grant Thornton] are talking about, or that people at the SEC are now asking about, make any of our quarters go from negative to positive or from positive to negative.

Will you and Johnson admit that your quoted statements above were false?

Regards,

Sam E. Antar

Marcum Purchasing UHY New England Locations, Tax Quizzes to Be Given?

Web CPA is reporting that Marcum, the firm best known for quizzing potential employees, is purchasing three offices of UHY Advisors (Boston, Hartford and New Haven) effective April 16th.

The addition of the three locations would make fourteenfifteen total for Marcum, who currently only has a Greenwich office in New England. After the deal is closed, UHY Advisors will have fourteen locations well.


No financial details were reported but it is reported that all the UHY employees will be retained by Marcum, pending the successful passing of a rigorous quiz given in a room with no windows, air conditioning and a one hour time limit.

A Marcum spokeswoman declined to comment and a message with UHY was not immediately returned.

Marcum to Buy UHY Offices in New England [Web CPA]

Overstock.com Blames Restatements on Accountants

Last week the financial three-ring circus Overstock.com officially put an end to its 2009 by filing its 10-K with the SEC (after a two week extension). Ring managed to keep his promise about turning a profit and managed to keep his head about it in his letter to shareholders only mustering, “It’s nice to be profitable.”

As you might expect, Sam Antar was not impressed and since the Company’s filing he and others (including Gary Weiss) have pointed out major internal control problems, mistakes in the footnotes, false disclosures related to an alleged “tax dodge” and now, NOW the most unforgivable thing yet.


Sam notes that the Company, in its infinite wisdom, has decided to blame its own accountants and their lack of knowledge for the most recent restatement in its 10-K:

We lacked a sufficient number of accounting professionals with the necessary knowledge, experience and training to adequately account for and perform adequate supervisory reviews of significant transactions that resulted in misapplications of GAAP.

Information technology program change and program development controls were inadequately designed to prevent changes in our accounting systems which led to the failure to appropriately capture and accurately process data.

These are the only two “control failures” identified by the Company in its filing that constitute material weaknesses. Naturally, the management team and the audit committee agreed with this assessment, “Our management concluded, and the Audit Committee of the Board of Directors agreed with management’s conclusions,” that former CFO David Chidester and former Treasurer Rich Paongo are the ones at fault here.

Is that class or what? So did Patrick Byrne finally realize that David Chidester and Rich Paongo, after several years at Overstock, lacked the “necessary knowledge, experience and training” so they and the Company “parted ways” (aka fired their sorry asses) for the latest restatement? What about the previous umpteen restatements? Why wasn’t didn’t the parting of ways occur after those?

Regardless of the answers to these questions, Sam has appealed to none other than Mary Schapiro to make sure the shenanigans don’t continue:

From: Sam E. Antar
Sent: Monday, April 05, 2010 3:56 AM
To: ‘Mary Schapiro’; ‘enforcement@sec.gov’;
Cc: ‘Patrick Byrne’; ‘Joseph Tabacco’; ‘Board – Jonathan Johnson’
Subject: Open Letter to the Securities and Exchange Commission (Part 8): Bring Enforcement Action Against Overstock.com for False and Misleading Disclosures
Importance: High

To Chairperson Mary Schapiro:

Enclosed is a link to my blog post entitled, “Open Letter to the Securities and Exchange Commission (Part 8): Bring Enforcement Action Against Overstock.com for False and Misleading Disclosures.”

Link here: http://whitecollarfraud.blogspot.com/2010/04/open-letter-to-securities-and-exchange.html

The blog post referred to in the link above, is to be considered a formal complaint to the SEC for continued false and misleading disclosures by Overstock.com and its officers. Please note that as a courtesy, I have cc’d Overstock.com on this email.

Respectfully,

Sam E. Antar

Is the SEC not interested in a slam dunk case? We’ll see.

Holiday Weekend Accounting News: KPMG Bolts Iran; Financial Statement Reader App for iPad?; IRS Job Creation; Another Koss Fraud Theory; Toni Braxton Tax Trubs; Illegals Bilk IRS for $13 mil; Job of the Day | 04.02.10

See you Monday, capital market servants. It’s okay, tax warriors – Just think, two weeks from today and you’ll be sleeping in.

• KPMG severs Iran ties [FT]
T Fly and Co. has pulled the plug on Iran after big pressure from the UANI, “Tom Wethered, KPMG International’s general counsel, wrote to UANI on Thursday that the accountancy network had terminated the membership of Bayat Rayan, one of Iran’s biggest accountants.” The FT reports that the firm cited “serious and escalating concerns,” about the country’s government.

• Imagine: iPad App l Statements [XBRL Business Information Exchange via CPA Trendlines]
Someone make this happen ASAP. “Imagine it. Everyone connected by the Web, not the current Web but the Semantic Web. iPads, iPods, iPhones, Androids, Smartphones; maybe a few PCs will still be around. IFRS used globally. Financial information in XBRL making it dynamic like a pivot table, rather than static like the legacy paper statements.”


• Is Hiring More IRS Employees ‘Job Creation’? [The Atlantic]
There’s a lot of hysteria over the 16,000-some odd new IRS agents that will be running around the country trying to steal your freedom. Those are real jobs though.

• Koss Fraud: Unrecorded revenue? [Fraud Files Blog]
Tracy Coenen kicks around another theory of how alleged shopaholic Sue Sachdeva hid her embezzlement from Grant Thornton, “I’ve heard from a few sources who I consider to be very reliable that Sachdeva hid her theft by not recording revenue. This would mean that Koss’s revenue was understated by $31 million during the time she was committing her theft.” Tracy points out that this method would be “messy” but “There is almost no chance that the auditors will discover the theft and the cover-up. The bulk of the auditors’ work is spent on the balance sheet. So long as transactions related to the theft don’t show up in the ending balances of the balance sheet accounts, she’s pretty safe there.”

• Singer Toni Braxton bobbles tax bill [Tax Watchdog]
Toni Braxton really needs help. She now owes the IRS nearly $400k after a $71k tab from last summer. We’ll say it again – Get Ludacris on the phone.

• 10 illegal aliens in S.C. admit to bilking IRS out of $13 million [Greenville Online]
Who do the teabaggers get mad at for this one? Don’t they hate the IRS and illegal aliens equally? We can only hope that this will cause their heads to explode. Oh, and because it’s in South Carolina we can probably expect a lynching of everyone involved.

• Job of the Day: Fannie Mae Needs a Experienced Accountant [GC Career Center]
Four to six years experience, CPA required. Responsibilities include: Compile, review, analyze, and record financial information to the general ledger. Complete monthly closings. Prepare balance sheet and profit and loss statements, consolidated financial statements, and other accounting schedules and reports. Located in DC Metro. You!

Five Questions with Norman Marks

Norman Marks is an “evangelist for GRC” (that’s governance, risk management and compliance for those of you that can’t do a Google search). He is a CPA, a chartered accountant and vice president, governance, risk, and compliance for SAP’s BusinessObjects division, and has been a chief audit executive of major global corporations for more than 15 years.

He blogs at the IIA website and keeps a personal blog on governance, risk management and internal controls. He is also the contributing editor of Internal Auditor’s “Governance Perspectives.”

If you read a few Norman’s posts you’ll understand his passion for internal audit, GRC and helping companies find solutions for these issues. Simply stated, Norman is one of the good guys and is doing more than his fair share to help take on the challenges in these areas.


Why should accountants read your blog?
My blog is for anybody with an interest in monitoring events and sharing views around governance, risk management, and internal audit. Accountants are more than people who maintain the books: they are businessmen and women interested in advancing and protecting their organization. That makes them natural leaders in each of these areas.

What are your three must-read accounting blogs and one must-read non-accounting blog?
I read the occasional business blog (aren’t all the better so-called accounting blogs really business blogs) when the topics are interesting. Certainly reTheAuditors by Francine McKenna is interesting. But I really enjoy Mike Jacka (an auditor/humorist) and Richard Chambers, President and CEO of the IIA.

A good accounting blogger is…
Not somebody who writes about (yawn) accounting, but about the accountant’s role in business and advancing the success of his or her organization.

The biggest issue facing accountants today is…
Will the inevitable court cases around Lehman and the principle of ‘fair presentation’ change the nature of external auditing, so that compliance with the rules of US GAAP is no longer sufficient?

Best accounting firm we’ve never heard of (and why they’re great)…
The firm that John Cleese worked in Monty Python (accounting is not boring). Seriously, though, the best accounting firm is the one that puts the interests of its customers first and foremost, consistently performs quality work, exercises fine judgment, provides sound and valuable advice, and sets fees that are reasonable by eliminating unnecessary work and recognizing that fees should not rise faster than wage inflation. You have never heard of them, because I have yet to see them. Sorry, sad, but true.

Here’s Why No One Needs to Get Worked Up Over the Healthcare Reform Earnings Hit

This story is republished from CFOZone, where you’ll find news, analysis and professional networking tools for finance executives.

The brouhaha over the hits to earnings from the new healthcare law that companies are announcing is much ado about very little.

First of all, the charge is an estimate of future costs and will have no immediate impact on cash flow. And the estimate is unusually large because the accounting rules require costs that would otherwise be reported in the future to be reported now, simply because they are the result of a change in tax treatment.


As my former colleague Marie Leone reports at CFO.com, such “true-ups” over differences in tax and book accounting practices are just that. The real cost will be spread out over many quarters.

More importantly, the hit is the result of a loss of a major taxpayer subsidy. Maybe it made sense before to provide that. But given all the concern about the federal deficit, it seems to me that asking shareholders to bear a bit more of the burden for retiree drug benefits is hardly unfair.

And in the greater scheme of things, the hit may be so small as to have little impact on companies’ valuations, as a Credit Suisse analyst pointed out the other day. General Electric didn’t even break out its estimate for that reason, calling the cost “immaterial.”

The question is whether companies will stop paying for the benefits because of the cost, and that’s unlikely unless they’re willing to compensate for the loss with higher wages, as economist Dean Baker reiterated to me in an email late last week.

“The standard economist view is that the cost of health care comes overwhelmingly out of wages,” Baker wrote. “If they have to pay more in taxes, then it will mostly come out of workers’ pay and have very little impact on their costs and ability to compete.”

If on the other hand, a decline in healthcare costs leads to higher wages, that would mean a stronger economy, so I don’t see how either taxpayers or shareholders will lose here in the long run.

Yes, that’s a big if, but as I’ve said before, the new healthcare law is the biggest effort to rein in costs undertaken to date. Of course more must be done, but the law will provide a big impetus to those efforts.

Hopefully, all this will become clearer as a result of the hearings Rep. Henry Waxman plans to hold next week on this issue, but I’m not holding my breath.

Overstock.com Turns a Profit; Patrick Byrne Writes a Very Un-Patrick Byrne Letter to Shareholders

This morning we thought the KPMG audit team working on Overstock.com would continue slaving away through the extension deadline tomorrow to get that beast of 10-K finished. Well! Turns out they’ll bet of you tonight because the OSTK 10-K has been filed and, as promised Overstock shareholders, your humble servant Patrick Byrne and Co. are reporting an annual profit for the first time ever!


After such a high, restatement or not, we’re guessing Sam Antar definitely won’t be getting an apology but Gary Weiss has already noted a couple of things:

First–stop the presses! Overstock’s auditors at KPMG says that Overstock has insufficient internal controls.

Second, the Marin County District Attorney and four other DAs in northern California want the company to fork over $8.5 million to settle consumer ripoffs by Overstock. The company disagrees and is fighting it, so …. No, wait a moment, make that read “$7.5 million.”

First off, we share Gary’s shock — SHOCK! — on the insufficient internal controls revelation. Second – AUDITORS! We talked about this, remember? Read the 10-K carefully. Overstock’s “Risk Factors” section runs 25 pages for crissakes. A million fucking clams can’t get missed!

You know what though? Mistakes happen, so we’ll let it slide.

Oh, and about that letter to shareholders. Patsy doesn’t bring up former auditor Grant Thornton once, doesn’t quote Nietzsche, compiain about short sellers, bring up Facebook, or say anything remotely antagonizing (although on page 32, the Company’s states he still might).

This makes think: 1) Is he not feeling well? 2) We want the old Patrick back! Read for yourself:

Dear Owner:

In Q4 our revenues grew 27%, twice the ecommerce industry’s rate, and we earned $12.7 million in net income. In 2009 we grew revenues 6%, earned $7.7 million in net income, generated $46 million in operating cash flow, and generated $39 million in free cash flow. It’s nice to be profitable.

I am proud that, for the second year in a row, we rank number 2 in the NRF/Amex survey of American consumers, behind only LL Bean and ahead of Amazon, Zappos, eBay, Nordstrom, and many other fine firms.

As you may know, at the end of Q4 we engaged KPMG as our independent auditors, and announced that we were restating our FY 2008 and Q1, Q2 and Q3 2009 financial statements. I thank you for being patient with us as we worked through the questions raised by the SEC, the transition to the KPMG team, and the extra time it took to ensure that our financial statements are accurate.

I look forward to our conference call next Monday. Until then, I remain,

Your humble servant,

Patrick M. Byrne

SEC Deadline Watch: Try Not to Make a Scene

So today marks the last major deadline for those working on SEC filers and that could mean that your life belongs to you once again. We should also mention that March 31st is a major deadline for many non-SEC clients so there are a lot auditors rejoicing today (or completely losing their shit).


Whether you plan on celebrating the end of your busy season by drinking yourself blind or sleeping at home rather than the office, is matter of personal choice. There will be no shortage of celebrations anyway – clients, team members and if you’re lucky, a firm-wide celebration after the tax trolls cross their finish line.

This also means that the talk of merit increases, promotions and layoffs will start swirling. PwC and E&Y have already re-reassured their troops that raises are coming this year. Some offices have seen the exodus begin so things will remain interesting and we definitely want to know about it.

Not everyone will be raging however. The aforementioned tax return jockeys still have two weeks of listening to ball-baby clients. For those that are still chasing their CPA, maybe you take a breather or maybe you just keep killing yourself and granted, some audit teams (e.g. Overstock.com) are still working but if you passed the finish line today, congrats, well done, yada yada yada.