| SIGN
OF THE TIMES The
Accounting Allure
Temptations
such as better pay and job satisfaction
are drawing more people to the accounting
world.
A
Salary.com survey ranked public
accounting among the best jobs for
career-changing professionals, citing a
projected 10-year job growth rate of 22%
and salary range of $36,800 to $90,700.
More
than 30% of career-switchers surveyed
said they’d spend “as long as
it takes” to complete the required
schooling and certification. But what are
these professionals looking for in their
new CPA career? As expected, increased
pay and advancement opportunities, but
also mental stimulation and challenges,
passion for the work, flexible schedules,
business networking and peer interaction.
Source:
www.salary.com.
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SIGN
OF THE TIMES
Firms Not
Planning for Booming Retirements
Almost 40% of
companies have made no projections about the
retirement rate of their employees and more than
25% have not even analyzed their work force
demographics, which might unexpectedly jeopardize
employer success, according to The Center on
Aging and Work/Workplace Flexibility at Boston
College.
The study
found that, although employers held a particular
interest in the retirement forecasts of their
older workers, only one-third had made
projections about retirement to a great (10%) or
moderate extent (24%).
Source: The
National Study Report, www.bc.edu/agingandwork.
SURVEY
SAVVY
Money
Talks
Nearly
80% of adults in serious relationships
have never hidden financial information
from their spouses or partners, according
to a Harris Interactive Personal Finance
Poll.
Despite this apparent honesty, more than half (51%) of survey respondents still argued about finances. The most common disagreements included: irresponsible spending (19%), not saving enough (10%), not paying bills on time (7%) and not consulting with one another before making a purchase (6%).
Source:
Harris Interactive, www.harrisinteractive.com.
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GOLDEN
BUSINESS IDEA
Use
Power Efficiently at the Office
Have
a long-term goal to reduce your overhead
and operating budget? Every few years
firms can schedule professional energy
audits, which pinpoint where your office
is wasting energy and suggest how to
increase efficiency. Follow these simple
tips to keep your employees comfortable
while cutting your summer energy bill:
 Install a
programmable thermostat. If your
office is empty at night, don’t
waste energy and money by cooling it when
you’re off the clock—set it to
click on an hour or two before employees
arrive in the morning.
Replace standard
light bulbs with compact fluorescent
bulbs. While slightly more
expensive than the traditional bulbs used
in desk lamps or hanging fixtures,
fluorescent bulbs use less energy, last
for several years and produce little
heat.
Turn up the
thermostat two or three degrees. Employees
will barely notice the negligible
temperature change, but you’ll see a
huge difference on the monthly bill.
Set computers to “sleep” or
“hibernate” when not in use. Choose
this energy-saving setting for your work
computer while at home and vice versa.
And remember to turn off and unplug all
electronics while on vacation.
Also,
the next time you’re in the market
for new breakroom appliances, office
equipment or electronics, look for
products with the “Energy Star”
sticker, which meet or exceed Department
of Energy and Environmental Protection
Agency standards, or browse the
program’s Web site, www.energystar.gov,
before you head to the store.
Source:
www.bankrate.com.
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SURVEY
SAVVY
Managers’
Reputations Outshine Execs’
More
than half of employees are happy with their
manager’s performance (52%) and honesty
(60%), but top executives did not receive equal
praise.
According to
a survey by Robert Half International and
CareerBuilder.com, only 44% of workers are
satisfied with executive performance and 40%
believe executives are trustworthy. The
percentage of employees who think executives lead
by example and are able to motivate staff drops
even lower, to 36% and 34%, respectively.
Rosemary
Haefner, vice president of human resources at
CareerBuilder.com, notes, “Line managers
have the benefit of being able to build rapport
through daily interactions, whereas corporate
executives typically must rely on more formal
communication channels, which may not always be
effective.”
Source: www.roberthalf.com/pressroom.
NUMEROLOGY
Technology
Boosts Counterfeit Circulation
The
U.S. Secret Service seized $62 million of
counterfeit currency in the 2006 fiscal
year, up 69% from 2003. About
54% of the fake currency collected was
produced digitally, most likely using
home computers and printers; in 1996,
only 1% was made using digital
technology.
Source:
USA Today.
|
TECH
TALK
Shunning
Spam
As technology
advances, so do the tricks spammers use to
deliver junk mail to your inbox. Save time,
energy and IT resources by following these tips
to reduce the unsolicited, and sometimes
dangerous, messages:
 Don’t
reply to spam, even to request removal. Any
reply to spammers will confirm your e-mail
address is active, often increasing the number of
messages you’ll receive.
Remove
your e-mail address from public sites. On
business sites, install a Web-based mail form for
potential client inquiries. On public sites, such
as newsgroups and bulletin boards, use an
alternate free address.
Read
privacy policies. Opt out of third-party
offers and avoid submitting your address
completely to sites that don’t post a
privacy policy. The option to receive these
“partner” offers is often selected
automatically, so look for a box to uncheck.
Block
graphics in HTML messages. Only download
pictures in HTML e-mails sent from sources you
know and trust. Graphics are often linked to
spammers’ Web servers, which, when
downloaded, verify your e-mail address.
Source: U.S.
Computer Emergency Readiness Team, www.us-cert.gov,
and Microsoft, www.microsoft.com.
BOOKMARKS
Performance
Dashboards and Analysis for Value
Creation
by
Jack Alexander, CPA
301 pages with CD-ROM; hardcover
John Wiley & Sons; Hoboken, N.J.;
2007 Like the
proverbial elephant described by blind
men, company performance and value are
parts of the same beast but feel vastly
different to managers and investors. In Performance
Dashboards and Analysis for Value
Creation, former public-company CFO
Jack Alexander, now head of Value
Advisory Group LLC, shows how they fit
together. While the dashboard metaphor of
the title may be familiar to many
readers, the book goes beyond management
assessment to demystify finance and link
it to business operations, with an
emphasis on long-term sustainable growth.
The first section
covers metrics of business fundamentals—many
of them basic but some, like economic
value added and return on invested
capital, especially useful in building
what Alexander in the middle section
expounds as a “value performance
framework.” He then describes tools
to promote performance and value
simultaneously. Often in many companies,
obvious factors such as sales growth are
overemphasized at the expense of
operating and capital efficiency, cost of
capital and intangibles, all of which can
be crucial in contracting markets.
Alexander strives to
bridge what often is a chasm between
finance and performance management. Where
other books might dwell on the accounting
niceties of a capital assets pricing
model, for example, he offers a
common-sense explanation of how cost of
capital affects value.
An accompanying CD-ROM
contains more than 30 Microsoft Excel
workbook models and exercises in which
readers can plug in their own financial
data to put the book’s concepts into
practice.
—by
Paul Bonner
|
DATA
POINT
84
The
percentage of financial institutions with
a chief risk officer on staff. Another 8%
plan to add this position.
Source:
Deloitte & Touche USA LLP’s Accelerating Risk Management Practices, www.deloitte.com.
|
TECH
TALK
Collaborative
Fraud Networks on the Rise
Cyber
criminals must adapt their collection methods to
remain undetected, and it seems they’re
linking together to make this happen.
The latest Symantec
Internet Security Threat Report found the
underground networks and servers used to sell
stolen data are becoming increasingly
collaborative. During the last half of 2006, the
number of computers infected by malicious bots
grew by 29% to 6 million, while the number of
servers relaying commands to these bots actually
fell by 25%. The majority (51%) of all identified
underground servers are in the U.S.
Hackers are
going after particular pieces of confidential
information, such as birthdates and Social
Security, credit card and bank account numbers,
which together form an identity. Symantec
reported the rising number of Trojans and bot
networks, which allow hackers to remotely access
computers, caused a 48% increase in threats to
this confidential information. In the underground
economy, complete identities are worth $14 to
$18, whereas individual credit card numbers only
fetch $1 to $6.
Source: www.symantec.com/threatreport.
THE
WORLD’S DUMBEST FRAUDSTERS
Roundup
Edition  If you thought the 24-year
prison sentence handed to former Enron
CEO Jeffrey Skilling was severe, think
again. A Chinese court has ordered Wang
Zhendong to death for his role in a fraud
case. Zhendong conned more than 10,000
investors out of $390 million by falsely
convincing them that he had developed a
secret method of growing giant ants. What
someone would do with these creatures, if
they actually existed, is unclear.
Ramona Tucker, of Greenville,
S.C., just can’t seem to keep from
helping herself. She faces 24 to 30
months in prison for embezzling money
from her employer to pay restitution from
two previous embezzlement convictions.
Masakazu Kamitanida, of
Tokyo, picked the wrong location for his
scam. He went to the top floor of a
three-story apartment building and tried
to pass himself off as a fellow resident
who needed to borrow cash due to a death
in the family. It didn’t take the
authorities long to figure out what was
going on; the fraudster had inadvertently
picked a building that housed executives
of the Tokyo police department.
—Joseph
T. Wells, CPA, CFE, the Association of
Certified Fraud Examiners
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