July 2004 - Journal of Accountancy

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY RECENT SCANDALS HAVE CREATED A PUBLIC perception that corporate executives are putting their own interests ahead of shareholders’ concerns. While the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 does not directly mandate changes in compensation methods beyond placing restrictions on personal loans to executives, its emphasis on corporate governance has been

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY LEAN MANUFACTURING PRINCIPLES FOCUS on eliminating waste and producing only to meet customer demand. They also typically require a company to move from a functional division of work to work cells where all of the processes needed to manufacture a product or line occur next to each other

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY INTERNSHIPS FOSTER SUCCESSFUL PROFESSIONAL development for students and firms. To get started, a firm’s project manager should check the local university or college’s Web site for its requirements and the name of the faculty coordinator to contact. THE EDUCATIONAL OPPORTUNITIES FIRMS PROVIDE vary with their capacity. Large-firm internship

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY CPAs CAN USE THEIR UNDERSTANDING of business structures, familiarity with financial reports and disciplined, analytic thinking to succeed at other endeavors. Those who have launched alternative or auxiliary careers emphasize the resources being a CPA can offer. A SELDOM-TOUTED ASSET OF BEING A CPA, particularly in public practice,

ccess, the Microsoft database, although very powerful and flexible, is hardly the friendliest tool in the Office suite. Even experienced users have been known to fume over its complexity. So what do you do if your organization’s customer lists and inventory data are stored in Access and you want that

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY PRACTITIONERS CAN USE the AICPA Competency Self-Assessment Tool (CAT) to evaluate which professional performance areas they need to strengthen to refine skills for their present jobs or train for positions they aspire to. Firms and companies can purchase it as a multiuser tool to help with staff development