Yo. I trust everyone had a nice Halloween. If you have a tip, a link we should see, or have a comment about literally anything remotely related to the accounting profession you can email or text any time (tipsters are always anonymous).
I’d still like to know which one of you this is:
Alright, which one of you did this pic.twitter.com/678EJddb7L
— Going Concern (@going_concern) November 1, 2025
15 years of counting kids on Halloween, Excel [OC] from r/dataisbeautiful
A founder says the big consulting firms are like “Blockbusters waiting to be Netflixed.”
A longer window to claim overpayments in Missouri seems to be having the opposite effect: unclaimed overpayments are up and it’s more work for the people who are in charge of them. KTTN reports:
A recent report from State Auditor Scott Fitzpatrick reveals that a Missouri law intended to give taxpayers more time to recover overpaid sales and use taxes has instead led to the state holding a growing volume of unclaimed overpayments, while also increasing the administrative workload for the Missouri Department of Revenue. The audit rates the department’s oversight of the process as “good” but highlights several structural flaws that have allowed the volume and value of unclaimed funds to more than double over the past five years.
The law changed in 2019, going from three years to 10. Most states allow four.
Wall Street Journal published an exclusive on Friday night while everyone else was out trick-or-treating: BDO’s First Brands Audit Painted Healthy Picture Months Before Collapse.
Accenture has a new client: Alaska Airlines. Reports GeekWire:
Alaska Airlines said Friday it has hired global consulting firm Accenture to conduct a full audit of its technology systems, part of a broader push to improve reliability after two major IT outages in recent months. The review will include a top-to-bottom examination of the airline’s systems, standards, and processes.
The move follows a major outage last week that grounded flights for eight hours.
The outage affected 50,000 flyers, said the airline in a post-outage apology.
Financial Review columnist Paul Karp discusses Deloitte’s big AI blunder with a twist. The article short says it all:
Before using artificial intelligence, professionals should question how important it is to get correct results – and whether the work needs doing at all.
Grant Thornton catches a stray in a Financial Times article about BDO’s global network “exploring using private capital to merge its member firms”:
“There’s a lot of lessons from Grant Thornton and the way that they’ve gone about” their private equity deal, said one of the people familiar with BDO’s plans. “They’ve ended up with the US and the UK competing over deals, which makes no sense.”
Reading, Pennsylvania gets a clean opinion from its auditors and we get acknowledgment of a large accounting firm merger when the local news reports it (Cherry Bekaert announced on October 8 they would be acquiring Herbein + Company). Reading Eagle reports:
Christopher M. Turtell and Megan Thompson, partners with Cherry Bekaert, formerly Herbein + Company Inc., presented Reading’s 2024 external audit at City Council’s committee of the whole meeting Monday.
The auditors reported that the city received clean opinions for its financial statements and federal programs, meaning there were no significant deficiencies or compliance issues.
The city’s general fund ended 2024 with an operating deficit of about $1.9 million, Turtell said, but remained in a strong overall position with a total fund balance of $44.4 million, including $36.5 million unassigned.
That amount far exceeds the minimum reserve target of 20% of the budget, or about $22 million.
Up north, the Canada Revenue Agency is stepping up compliance, reports Globe and Mail:
In its 2025–26 departmental plan, the CRA says it will continue to leverage technology “to more accurately and efficiently identify high-risk taxpayers” and “to deliver compliance activities focused on addressing tax avoidance within the wealthy population.”
MNP regional tax leader Jeanne Cheng said the agency’s audit activity has “intensified and expanded in recent years,” with the CRA now relying largely on artificial intelligence and data analytics to select which taxpayer groups to audit.
In addition, the federal government is set to provide the CRA with new, expanded audit powers, including the power to compel testimony under oath.
Cash businesses should also be aware that CRA is looking extra closely at them.
An audit has found that San Francisco budgeted nearly $60 per person on street cleaning, reports SF Chronicle:
San Francisco spends three times more per resident on street and sidewalk cleaning than Los Angeles, despite L.A. having 3 million more residents, according to a new city audit.
San Francisco has become notorious for its dirty streets — particularly for the ubiquity of feces — and has in recent years budgeted millions to deal with the problem, shoveling money into street and sidewalk cleaning programs.
But the city is budgeting significantly more money on these services, both per capita and per square mile, than a subset of surveyed peer cities reviewed in a recently released report by the San Francisco Budget and Legislative Analyst.
OK, well that means the streets are sparkling right?
A different report, from the controller’s office, found recently that the amount of feces, graffiti and illegal trash dumping on San Francisco sidewalks slightly increased over the past year.
Oh.
And that’s enough news for today. Go out there and have a good week or else.
