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Buy one, get one free… Discounts on future purchases… Coupons for free products… Loyalty points… Sounds familiar? Well, if you work in a company that sells some products or services to individuals or general public (not the other businesses), then you probably use some “carrots on the stick” to persuade people to buy. Here, the … Read more

If you invest your savings to the purchase of some shares on the stock exchange, then you probably perform some analysis in order to select the right stock. Well, this is at least what you should do. Still, your own hard-earned money needs to work efficiently to make you enough profits for your retirement (or … Read more

When I was an audit freshman, my least favorite task was to prepare the income tax reconciliation. I frankly hated it. Why? The main reason was that I did not understand the purpose of it. For me, it seemed like a bunch of numbers and percentages that never add up and the magic table never … Read more

Sometimes, the things can happen behind your back – without you even noticing. And, these things can affect you somehow. Let me tell you a short story. I participated in an audit of a big insurance company and our senior asked me to look at its investments. Not surprisingly, this insurance company held lots of … Read more

About 3 years ago, I was reviewing the financial statements of a medium-sized company providing consumer loans. They needed the IFRS financial statements due to lots of loans taken from foreign banks. Usually, these banks require bigger debtors to provide the financial statements annually. So I was checking the notes to the financial statements. The … Read more

If you have a large portfolio of trade receivables, then you face the same issue over and over again: How to calculate bad debt provision to these receivables? When I worked as an auditor, I used to discuss this issue with my colleagues very frequently. Everyone of them agreed that yes, there is always some … Read more

During my audit days in Arthur Andersen I had a privilege to lead audit engagements in a few subsidiaries of international holdings and groups. For me, it was very interesting and educative. First of all I learned that the local management of these subsidiaries is often just a formal function and the real decisions are … Read more

I lost my first serious job in Arthur Andersen in 2001. I was devastated, because I really loved that job. Yes, it was full of hard work and long overtimes, but it was the best accounting and auditing school ever. How did I lose my job? Well, Arthur Andersed died after the big accounting scandal … Read more

Recently I had an argument with auditors of one company related to the customer list they bought. The company paid significant amount of cash for the list of customers of telecommunications. The list contained the names, addresses and phone numbers of all the clients. And, the buyer intended to use the list to contact the … Read more

Many companies incur huge costs from which they expect to benefit in the future. For example, companies pay salaries to software engineers who develop some game or an application. Well, how would you treat these costs? It does not feel OK to put all salaries of these engineers in profit or loss when they are … Read more