for Independent Financial & Business Consulting
Long-awaited developments in lease accounting may need work doing now…
The complications of lease accounting, and differing treatments of similar contracts, continues to cause problems for both preparers and users of accounts. The FASB and IASB are working to release an exposure draft (ED) later this year which may effectively remove the distinction between finance and operating leases and therefore their accounting treatments.
I was invited to what appeared to be an infinite series of meetings recently, the first one of which was to determine why they had been scheduled!
Don’t you just love meetings? Regardless, there are times when they are unavoidable. No doubt the recent air travel problems caused by Mount Eyjafjallajökull caused a large number of business meetings to be cancelled, but we can only guess how much value was lost (or gained!).
Everyone wants more for less. Consumers do, and so employers and clients do. That’s the definition of improved efficiency – more output for less input (see Adam Smith for details!), and for professional workers that means delivering more value in less time.
One of my pet sayings, as both my colleagues and family would testify to, is ‘presentation is everything’.
Is this right where financial and management reporting is concerned, or is it just an irrelevant saying with no basis in the business world?
There is often organisational concern as to whether, and how quickly, hiring interim staff can add value. It is difficult to justify, especially when cash or profit is tight, expenditure on something that cannot evidently pay dividends quickly.
I have myself been guilty, in a previous life, of considering ‘temps’ for only a certain type of work that can be picked up quickly, controlled easily, and where not much can go wrong. This is OK where you are just short of a head or two, and need to make up the numbers to keep on top of volume tasks.
Continue reading ‘Do Interim Executives actually add value?’