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Improve Disclosure Management: Webinar On-Demand
CFOs and controllers have been sternly reminding their staffs that there is zero tolerance for errors or delays in financial reporting. The heat source: regulators worldwide who have been ratcheting up quality standards for disclosures. That, coupled with XBRL adoption, is prompting finance teams…
Reduce Compliance Risk with Strong Control of Debt Covenants
A recent survey of finance executives found that many companies overlook or minimize so-called debt covenant compliance risk. This is the risk that a company could default on a bank loan because it failed to keep promises spelled out in a loan agreement. A recent report, “Best Practices…
Paperless Payments—Better Late than Never
The benefits to be gained by paying suppliers electronically have been detailed extensively by APQC’s research staff and other observers. But accounts payable (AP) managers, for a variety of reasons, have clung tightly to the practice of using paper checks for about 75 percent of their vendor…
The Real Pros are Facing IFRS Now
For more than a decade, finance executives have been hearing about the difficulties that would land in their laps once the SEC set the date on which U.S. firms would have to stop using GAAP (generally accepted accounting principles) and start using the “globally harmonized” accounting regime known…
Accounts Payable Metrics—Which View Makes Sense Today?
The financial crisis of 2008 had ripple effects that we still feel today. Consider that CFOs and treasurers have been rewriting the rules for deploying spare operating cash. In the “good old days,” when the major world economies were percolating steadily, the standard rule was to pay vendors as…
Atypical Risks Take Center Stage
Large companies that operate globally are now rethinking the way they manage significant risks, whether those risks are operational or financial in nature or whether they stem from weak strategic planning. They are not concerned so much about their well-honed processes for procuring and sourcing…
Faster, Better Financial Forecasts—Now or Never?
Economics has long been called “the dismal science.” The reason is that economists tend to make predictions that prove wrong. So, here we are in August 2011, and the consensus view is that developed countries such as the U.S. will experience slow and uneven GDP growth over the next 12 months. I’d…
True Grit: More Than a Movie
APQC research shows that a growing number of financial executives have resolved that traditional approaches for managing business performance are no longer adequate. As large organizations struggle to plan and execute growth strategy in an economic recovery that is hard to read, many are embracing…