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Even PwC Is Hyping Up GTA VI Now

With 14 days to go until the release of the most anticipated game of this decade, PwC has pushed out a bit of thought leadership-slash-economic analysis titled "Vice City, everywhere:…

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Deloitte Guy’s Love Life Has Become a Federal Matter

Last Friday, 42-year-old Ian Brinksman was picked up by the feds for allegedly passing top secret national defense information to another individual. Though that individual wasn't named by any reports,…

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Hackers Have Apparently Stolen a Whole Lot of PwC Homework

Oh no, hackers have swiped oodles of slides! PwC has confirmed that a third-party vendor it uses for employee records has been breached after a "cyber extortion group" said they…

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PwC Ekes Past EY With $60.2 Billion in Reported Global Revenue

Wow, Big 4 are really rushing out revenue numbers this year aren't they? First we got Deloitte in late September, EY two weeks later, and now PwC has just dropped…

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KPMG office but upside down because Australia

KPMG Australia Has Made a List of Things It Probably Should Have Done Already

...such as "support whistleblowers" and "punish people who do stuff that will give Australian Financial Review an easy 9 months of negative headlines." So KPMG Australia is still in its…

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News

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PCAOB Announces Five Specialized Enforcement Units to Ferret Out Audit Violations

The PCAOB announced yesterday that they've put together five new units underneath the enforcement umbrella, each with their own specialized expertise. In the PCAOB's words, those units are: Strategic Risk…

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Monday Morning Accounting News Brief: PwC to Teach Thinking; Support Your Local Whistleblower | 11.9.26

Hey. Got some news for you so you have something that isn't politics to talk about at the water cooler. In this news briefPwC Will Certify ThinkersThat's a Big Number"People…

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Friday Footnotes: KPMG Settles With Investors; AICPA Proposes Outside Investor Guidance | 11.6.26

Footnotes is a collection of stories from around the accounting profession curated by actual humans and published every Friday at 5pm Eastern. While you're here, subscribe to our newsletter to…

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PS5 controller

Even PwC Is Hyping Up GTA VI Now

With 14 days to go until the release of the most anticipated game of this decade, PwC has pushed out a bit of thought leadership-slash-economic analysis titled "Vice City, everywhere:…

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Turns Out Offshoring Isn’t a Cheap Forever Solution to Talent Problems

Well we knew this would happen eventually. An article published today in Accountants Daily is all about how small firms over in Australia are struggling to hire talent. Now, if…

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Technology

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Just in Case You Were Unsure, IRS Official Clarifies AI Is Not a Person Under Circular 230

The Journal of Accountancy has published an interesting article about comments made by the director of the IRS Office of Professional Responsibility at the AICPA National Tax Conference yesterday, an…

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The Robots Want Your Emails, and the AICPA Has Concerns

Last month a pitch arrived in our editor inbox, the title of which was "Going Concern, meet the startup helping accounting firms turn old Slacks and emails into free money."…

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robber takes PwC learning data

Hackers Have Apparently Stolen a Whole Lot of PwC Homework

Oh no, hackers have swiped oodles of slides! PwC has confirmed that a third-party vendor it uses for employee records has been breached after a "cyber extortion group" said they…

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woman being annoyed by clients

Bill Gates Predicts AI Will Be Taking Clients’ Most Tedious Questions 24/7 Within a Few Years

Did you catch Bill Gates' recent chat with Ezra Klein? I didn't, thankfully my washed colleague regularly reads NYT and sent it to me via Slack. Many people are stuck…

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Business guys with AI robots

The AICPA Wants Tax Pros to Take a Hit From Its New AI Risk CART

Rather than dropping a strongly worded letter on the topic of the IRS's position on AI in tax practice and dropping the topic there to focus on other pressing matters,…

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Practice Management

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Just in Case You Were Unsure, IRS Official Clarifies AI Is Not a Person Under Circular 230

The Journal of Accountancy has published an interesting article about comments made by the director of the IRS Office of Professional Responsibility at the AICPA National Tax Conference yesterday, an…

Read More
Vintage tin toy robot hiding behind orange computer circuit board

The Robots Want Your Emails, and the AICPA Has Concerns

Last month a pitch arrived in our editor inbox, the title of which was "Going Concern, meet the startup helping accounting firms turn old Slacks and emails into free money."…

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Finance Leaders Are Shopping for a CAS Partner, and They Brought a List

Cash flow, automation, fraud protection. Your firm can deliver all three. Finance leaders would like some help with the accounting. Not a little help, either. BILL asked 354 finance decision-makers…

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Expense Management: Because Apparently Clients Will Pay You to Make Expense Reports Suck Less

Spend and expense management is one of the most in-demand CAS services—and one of the most underutilized. There’s still plenty of room to get into the game. Clients are drowning…

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For Firms, Growth is Down But Profitability Is Up

That's the headline from INSIDE Public Accounting based on the results of their 2026 Practice Management Report: The report draws on survey responses from 605 North American accounting firms, spanning…

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Quick Reads

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Here Are Tax and Audit Salaries at Top 25, Top 300, and Regional Firms

Recruiting firm Brewer Morris has released its 2025 US CPA salary guide and should you want to read the whole thing you can request it from them here. Perhaps you,…

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Friendly Reminder Not to Work Yourself to Death For This Profession

Saw this on the bird app yesterday and thought its message would be worth passing along what with 20 days remaining until April 15 and nerves as strained as ever…

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Accounting Firm Abruptly Nopes Out of Tax Season Early (UPDATE)

Ed. note: An earlier version of this article's headline stated the sheriff is investigating. The Alexander County Sheriff's Office informed us they are not investigating, only fielding calls from the…

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This Deloitte Office Has Eliminated Trash Cans at Desks to Make Staff Get Up Off Their Asses

Boston Business Journal wrote an article about Deloitte's new office in Boston and for some reason they chose to lead with this: You won’t find trash cans at the desks…

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The IRS Decided to Troll Tax Pros For 10/15

We realize the decision to run maintenance on IRS systems likely isn't made by anyone who understands deadlines but surely someone who does could inform the IT department of these…

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two gentlemen solving business problems

Finance Leaders Are Shopping for a CAS Partner, and They Brought a List

Cash flow, automation, fraud protection. Your firm can deliver all three. Finance leaders would like some help with the accounting. Not a little help, either. BILL asked 354 finance decision-makers…

Read More
Man struggling with paper expense receipts

Expense Management: Because Apparently Clients Will Pay You to Make Expense Reports Suck Less

Spend and expense management is one of the most in-demand CAS services—and one of the most underutilized. There’s still plenty of room to get into the game. Clients are drowning…

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Top Remote Accounting Freelancers: February 3, 2024

Looking to staff up for a season or hire a freelancer for a project? Accountingfly is ready to partner with you! Gain full access to a pool of highly skilled…

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10 Essential Project Management Principles for Accounting Firms

Every accounting firm struggles with project management, with smaller practices that are rapidly expanding taking the brunt of the damage. As your firm adds new clients, takes on more work,…

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Trying to Decipher the Awkward and Scattered Sex Lives of Accountants

The blog Energized Accounting asks if accountants make better lovers. Now before you all squawking about how you’re an animal in the sack, let’s try to be realistic about this question.

First of all, this makes the assumption that accountants are getting laid in the first place. This is mostly farcical for a couple reasons: A) Lots of accountants have to choose between sleeping and eating already because of the hours they work. You throw in boot-knocking and some excel wizards are going to start starving to death; and 2) Unofficial statistics have shown that seven out ten accountants have no game. You may not know who you are but your friends do.

So based on that, 30% of you are getting some action. And since there is a rampant proclivity to date co-workers (which we will exclude for this exercise) among accountants that narrows it down to about 5% of accountants having sex with non-bean counters. As we mentioned, you’re working most of the time so where the hell is this hot sex happening? We’re thinking that national training sessions might be one spot, where you’re picking up prosties or random hot townies in whatever strange city you happen to land in? Accountants treat national training like Vegas so pretty much anything goes but what about the other 51 weeks in the year? Is that what is going on at those two hour lunches? Do some client locations have rooms set up for this like a swing-joint? Try to enlighten us without making a scene.

Big 4 Firms Will Probably Have to Cut Some Checks

Since BDO International Global Coordination was able to dodge the bullet in the Banco Espirito case, litigation against the Big 4 has been pretty quiet. Oh sure, you could bring up Schein v. E&Y but the money at stake isn’t that big and Schein is claiming Oliver Stone-type conspiracy theory so we’re hesitant to get too worked up about it.
However, if you’re craving bean counter courtroom drama it won’t be long until you’re up to your ass in Jack McCoy-types screaming about how crooked accountants are.
According to research firm, Audit Analytics, there are eight firms at risk for potential lawsuits related to King Ponzi alone along with six other potential lawsuits related to the financial clusterfuck.
Audit Analytics also was kind enough to pull together some data on who’s winning the race to pay out the most settlement. The top 50 malpractice suits against the Big 4 since 1999 break down like this, per Compliance Week:
1. E&Y – $1.92 billion
2. KPMG – $1.42 billion
3. PwC – $1.27 billion
4. Deloitte – $1.24 billion
Don’t expect the trend of the firms handing over asstons of cash to end anytime soon as settling these cases out of court seems to be best way for the firms to extend their seemingly shortening lives.

Guess What My Intern Did?

intern-where-is-my-report.jpgA commenter read our minds with regard to talking about interns, God bless ’em.
So today, in the spirit of the intern-season, we’re launching the first edition of “Guess What My Intern Did?” because sometimes they can do stupid things and we want to hear about it.
Examples could possibly include: any kind of shameless, awkward sexual advances on superiors; asking he/she to get a copy of an email from the asshole CFO; showing up to work hung over smelling like Ken Lewis; You get the idea.

Survey: No Confidence in Mark-to-Market

thumbs down col.gifThis may come as shock to some of you but mark-to-market accounting is unpopular. And when we say unpopular, we don’t mean your nerdy brother-unpopular, we’re talking George W. Bush-unpopular. Now before you go apeshit about “reality” and “economic cycles” will share some results with you from a survey provided by Valuation Research Corporation and then you can engage in your the steel-cage death dork match.
• According to the survey, 58% of respondents believe that market turmoil negates Fair Value Accounting’s validity
• Those who believed FVA was flawed and potentially not valid during market turmoil, almost 34% suggested a temporary return to historical cost accounting as an alternative
• Regarding Level 3 Assets: A full 44% believed the bank values were within an accuracy of 10% and another 40% thought those values were as much as 30% off.
• Regarding Level 3 Assets: Thirty-six percent believed hedge fund and private equity values were only within an accuracy of 10% and a full 49% thought those values were as much as 30% off.
• Respondents were split when asked if mark-to-market should be suspended for the purposes of bank regulatory capital with 50% believing it should be and 50% believing it should not be.
So the take away seems to be that MTM doesn’t work and is pretty much not legit when the shit hits the fan, everyone trying to value Level 3 assets is using a dartboard, and nobody knows how to fix the problem.
Definitely interesting results but if anyone says, “Barney Frank knew what he was talking about”, projectile vomiting is going ensue.
Survey – No Confidence in Fair Value.pdf

BDO ‘Invites’ Partners to Retire in the UK

BDO-small.jpgBDO in the UK has “‘invited’ 24 partners to take retirement and is in the process of settling the details over the withdrawal of equity”, according to Accountancy Age. And by “invited”, we’re pretty sure BDO means, “pack your shit”.
According to Simon Michaels, the head honcho in the UK, the “withdrawal of equity” would not be an “unmanageable situation to deal with” which is sorta like saying “it’ll hurt for a little while but as soon as my ownership is bigger, I’ll be over it.”
This whole sitch across the pond compelled us to call a BDO rep here in the States to find out what might be going down for the American partners. We were told that there were no plans for dismissal of partners in U.S. and in fact, partners will likely to continue to be added to the firm. This jogged our hazy memory about our speculation that BDO was adding some partners last month in order to spread out some liability.
So it appears that since BDO International Global Coordination isn’t on the hook for the half a billion in liability from the Banco Espirito case, they can’t afford to keep all their partners. BDO in States, on the other hand, needs to spread out the love on the liability. Don’t you love it when everything makes sense?
Reality bites for BDO Stoy Hayward [Accountancy Age]

Scoping | 07.22.09

• BlackRock chief attacks Wall Street earnings – Somebody’s jealous. [FT.com]
• Credit Card Disputes Tossed Into Disarray – “Two major arbitration firms are backing away from the business of resolving disputes between customers and their credit-card and cellphone companies, throwing into disarray a controversial system that prevents unhappy consumers from filing lawsuits.” [WSJ]
• Federal reserve chief heads back to Capitol Hill– “Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke heads back to Capitol Hill Wednesday, where he’s likely to face more tough questions about the central bank’s extraordinary actions to rescue the economy and its ability to take on even more responsibility.” [AP via Miami Herald]
• Morgan Stanley Loss Misses Estimates on Debt Costs – Creative accounting can’t help MS…[Bloomberg]
• Wells Fargo Says Bad Loans Rise in Second Quarter; Shares Drop – …Or Wells [Bloomberg]

Review Comments | 07.21.09

Ben_Bernanke.jpg• Bernanke Sheds Light on Exit Strategy – “Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke shed light Tuesday on the toolkit the central bank can employ to unwind its crisis measures, but he made clear to lawmakers that the economy remains too weak to start tightening monetary policy.” Better than no exit strategy [WSJ]
• CIT Expects Loss of $1.5 Billion, May Seek Bankruptcy – “CIT Group Inc., the 101-year-old commercial lender seeking to avoid collapse, said it expects to report a loss of more than $1.5 billion for the second quarter and may need to file for bankruptcy if it’s unable to tender for notes maturing next month.” [Bloomberg]
• Apple’s quarterly profit tops forecasts – The good results… [Reuters]
• Yahoo sees drop in income from operations this quarter – …and the bad. [Reuters]
• Which Of Alan Greenspan’s More Quotable Quotes Will Bite Him In The Ass On The Big Screen? [DealBreaker]
• The Goldman Way to Celebrate: a Parody – Well played LB. Well played. [DealBook]

Promotion Watch: KPMG

Forgive us for being a little behind on this, we’re still twisting arms out there:
On July 15th, the Radio Station announced the promotion of 874 new Senior Managers and Managers. This compares to 1,228 that got the bump last year.
Some might say that there were less people up for promotion this year, hence the drop. Others might say “that’s because I got the axe and now live on government cheese”.
Click on the image below for a full-size view of the announcement (please note the crookedness as a sign of authenticity). Anyway, congrats to all the new taskmasters managers at KPMG!
kmpg_memo.gif

McGladrey & Pullen Doesn’t Love H&R Block Anymore

We’re deeply saddened to learn that McGladrey & Pullen and H&R Block are splitting up:

“This arrangement made sense in 1999,” said Dave Scudder, managing partner of McGladrey & Pullen LLP. “However, that operational and financial model does not serve us well as we address our future goals of client service, opportunity for our partners, and continued growth.”

Translation: It’s about the money.

“We are taking this action because we believe it to be in the best interests of our partners, our employees and our clients. We see great opportunities for success and growth for McGladrey & Pullen as a traditionally structured firm able to provide full service across all industry segments,” Scudder noted.

M&P also wanted you all to know that it’s not your fault, that they still love you but sometimes firms fall out of love.
McGladrey & Pullen News Release

Forbes: Senior Accountants Pay Rising in the Recession

Feel free to call bullshit on this because we’ve heard rumors about pay freezes at KPMG (they are getting back to us on this) but according to Forbes, senior accountants rank at #11 for “Hot Jobs Where Pay is Rising” in the recession. The list states median pay at $60,300. Not only that but apparently, there aren’t enough of you senior accountants:

There’s a shortage of senior accountants right now, and the recession has actually provided a chance for them to revive client relationships, believes Mark Koziel, senior manager of firm practice management at the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants. “As long as there’s small-business America, as long as there’s big-business America, there will still be a need to do auditing and tax returns,” he says.

This strikes us as strange as there have been layoffs at several firms. The need for auditing and is obvious but those of you left are probably doing the work of two or three people.
UPDATE, July 22, 2009: KPMG got back to us re: pay freezes and had no comment

Paulson’s Threatening of Ken Lewis Gets the Barney Frank Stamp of Approval

paulson2.jpgBarney Frank is stumped. Trying to figure out why Maxine Waters is MIA is one thing, but picking the evil mastermind behind the shakedown of Ken Lewis is a completely different enigma.
Even if Paulson ordered the code red, the Sass from Mass is pretty sure that was the right thing to do because we need guys like HP on that wall. When you’ve got the imminent financial apocalypse knocking at your door, threatening a bank CEO of questionable sobriety cannot be handled by someone of meekness and mild temperament (ahem, B-squared).
Hank Paulson did before and he’d do it again. He’d just rather you said “thank you” and went on your way.
Frank Says No “Villain” in Bank of America-Merrill Lynch Deal [Bloomberg]

What Say You? Are Early Promotions a Crock?

corp_ladder.jpgIt’s about the time of year where the Big 4 start announcing promotions and with promotions come the inevitable debate about who got promoted, who didn’t, hating on some, congratulating others, and ugly debates over those that were promoted early.

Early or skip promotions are never short on controversy. As one source put it “[early promotions] are completely arbitrary and situational, merit generally doesn’t play into it”.

The claim will often be made that someone needs to fill an empty role on a team. Sometimes it is a purely bullshit political situation and there have even been cases where older associates are promoted early based on their age and other work experience regardless of their performance with the current firm.

In one case, another source told us about an associate that was promoted to manager in three years (i.e. promoted early twice) but it was pretty clear to the most of team (i.e. staff) that the person was hardly ready for the pressures and responsibilities of being a manager.
The other side of this debate are the professionals that are actually performing at a high enough level to warrant the early promotion (no, really). Granted the situation has to arise where the individual has the opportunity to take on greater responsibility and thus proves him or herself but if someone does step up (read: working 24/7) to the plate on several occasions, maybe the promotion is warranted.

Because of the hierarchal nature of accounting firms, this may not even be an issue in your office but it does happen with freakish regularity at other offices. Let’s us know what your office has done in the past and what is going on this summer now that were in swing of promotion season. Feel free to discuss in the comments or email us your inside info to tips@goingconcern.com.