You won’t find trash cans at the desks in Deloitte’s new 138,000-square-foot office at Millennium Partners’ Winthrop Center tower in Boston’s Financial District.

That’s because the professional services giant’s leaders want employees getting up and going to common receptacles for trash, recycling and composting, part of the sustainability push that led the firm to sign a lease at the new building.

Said Deloitte New England MP Rebecca Chasen, “It forces people to go out and do the right things with their trash.” First you force people back into the office and now you won’t even give them their own trash cans?

We don’t know what type of trash cans Deloitte uses so we’re just going to have to guess on this one. Trash Cans Unlimited (seems legit) sells a 30-pack of these 14 gallon plastic desk side cans for $223.86, so approximately $7.46 per can.

Times about 3,500 employees in the Boston office and that’s a savings of $26,110.

When announcing the deal via press release last summer, the developer said that Deloitte’s Winthrop Center lease was the largest office lease signed in Boston and the surrounding community up until that point in 2023. They also said:

Located in the heart of Boston, the next-generation office space features a floor plate designed for a collaborative, flexible work environment; outdoor space on every floor; and amenities geared toward enhancing the everyday experience and wellbeing of organizations’ most important assets, their people. The newly signed lease is the largest office lease signed in Boston and the surrounding community this year. Deloitte is targeting to move into its new space at Winthrop Center in fall 2024.

Trash cans not included.

The post This Deloitte Office Has Eliminated Trash Cans at Desks to Make Staff Get Up Off Their Asses appeared first on Going Concern.

Apparently they were planning to do a little maintenance on the Tax Pro Account systems from October 13-15. No biggie. This is fine. It’s just like any other weekend. A holiday weekend no less!

but why?!? pic.twitter.com/IpyTDXaAdc

— Andrea Carr CPA (@andreacpa0) October 12, 2024

The notification no tax pro wants to see on the days leading up to 10/15:

Good news though! Thanks to a large number of exhausted tax pros taking time out of their busy emotional breakdowns to complain, the IRS decided not to torture them further with scheduled maintenance after all.

The #IRS Tax Pro Account maintenance this weekend has been postponed. The system will remain open. We appreciate tax pros and especially the long hours they’re putting in to serve taxpayers ahead of the 10/15 deadline. Thank you to #TaxTwitter pros for flagging this!

— IRSnews (@IRSnews) October 12, 2024

Happy 10/15, everyone.

Earlier:

The post The IRS Decided to Troll Tax Pros For 10/15 appeared first on Going Concern.

How X is feeling.

TurboTax states they’ll beat your last preparer’s 2023 price by at least 10% if you’ve got a receipt. Full Service currently starts at $129 for simple filers.

Has anyone worked as a TurboTax live expert? Let me know, I’d be curious to hear your experience.

The post Weekend Discussion: TurboTax Declares Itself Direct Competition of Tax Pros appeared first on Going Concern.

The Pun Group, LLP, a leading accounting firm specializing in comprehensive audit, tax, and advisory services, announced today that it has relaunched its website to highlight its longstanding industry success and the workplace solutions it offers its wide array of international clientele in advisory, assurance, and business and tax sectors.

“We really aimed to make our website and all of our collective knowledge more accessible to our clients whenever they want to engage with it,” said Kenneth Pun, Managing Partner at The Pun Group. “We worked with our technical team to provide easy and full access to all of our content relating to industries such as manufacturing, healthcare and entertainment and also to thought leadership pieces from our top executives.”

The new website delivers a modern, feature-rich experience that offers contemporary page layouts that enhance user navigation and overall experience. In addition, the website will highlight recent awards won by The Pun Group.

Well we know what awards won’t be appearing on pungroup.cpa:

Earlier this month, The Pun Group announced that it made the 2024 Best Companies Group’s list of the esteemed Best Places to Work SoCal list. The honorees are from a wide array of industries and are companies that have set new standards for creating and developing exceptional work environments. 

According to Best Companies Group, The Pun Group was chosen due to the flexibility of its workplace policies combined with the spirit of excellence inherent in its goals to strengthen its capabilities in audit and advisory services, further enhancing a commitment to delivering exceptional client service.

So what you’re saying is people count at your accounting firm?

The Pun Group just received another industry honor: It has earned the 2024 Clearly Rated Best of Accounting award for providing remarkable service to their clients. The Pun Group, LLP has 20 verified ratings from their clients earning them 4.9 out of 5 stars for its focus on audit, assurance, and business and tax.

Other winners of the 2024 Clearly Rated Best of Accounting award include Armanino, BPM, Forvis Mazars, and a whole bunch of other firms no one’s heard of.

In addition, The Pun Group has been named an IPA 500 firm and an IPA 500 Fastest-Growing firm, based on the 2024 IPA Practice Management Survey. The IPA 500 firms are ranked by U.S. net revenue and are compiled by analyzing 629 responses received this year for IPA’s survey. This is IPA’s 34th annual ranking of the largest accounting firms in the nation.

If only this Portlandia skit were real life.

Just going to leave this here: How to Become a Pun Master in Two Simple Steps

Leading Orange County-Based Accounting Firm, The Pun Group, LLP, Launches New Website Focusing on its Industry Expertise and Workplace Solutions [PRWeb]

The post Accounting Firm Named ‘The Pun Group’ Isn’t Punny at All appeared first on Going Concern.

OP says:

I’ve been working here a year in an office in New York and we had a call yesterday that went terribly. I believe the call was supposed to just be a tech training but it devolved into discussion over why this year was the way it was.

The biggest offender was a partner who explained the new PTO change as “now we don’t have to pay people out when they leave which is just good business let’s be real” like… ummmm WHAT?! He basically just admitted they made the policy to screw us over.

After months of rumors, KPMG announced firmwide unlimited PTO earlier this month. It was only a matter of time before some bullshit started coming out.

We all know “unlimited” PTO is a) a scam and b) a good way to avoid having several tens of millions of dollars a year hanging over your head as was stated in the email sent among EY leadership leaked in late 2020 when they made the switch to unlimited PTO. Text from the EY email quoted directly (emphasis ours):

A few key takeaways from the slide deck that support the reason for the change include:

• Provides cost savings of about $36M per year (2019 cost) associated with paying unused vacation at termination.
• Freezes the current vacation lability for the growing number of states with an accruat cap vs. a “use it or lose it approach, which significantly increases cost of paying unused vacation at termination. CA, CO, IL, MA, LA and i have accrual cap 1.5x annual allotment (25% of our people)
• Aligns with One EY, moving personnel to a single vacation policy and away from variances necessitated by varying state laws around treatment of accrued vacation
• Better aligns with culture of trust, flexibility and wellbeing
• Eliminates entitlement mentality and need for carryover of unused time or sense of “loss” by our people
• Positions EY as a “first mover among the big 4, providing a competitive advantage and serving as a differentiator on campus

For your reference, attached are the communication plan and a comprehensive list of questions and answers. Some of the key points above may not be shared with our people (e.g. $36M savings), but as business leaders you to know that this is a significant reason for the change.

Make sure the grunts don’t hear about the cost savings of $36 million that we listed as the first reason for the change! No sir. People know that’s a big reason why a firm would make this switch, you just don’t expect a partner to say that part out loud.

It’s just good business let’s be real!

The post QOTD: “Now We Don’t Have to Pay People Out When They Leave Which Is Just Good Business” appeared first on Going Concern.

The article is not ours (hence the compliment for good reporting and citations) but rather published on ProMarket: Young People Are Shunning the Accounting Profession. The 150-Hour Rule Is Responsible.

In the piece, industry OG Ray Ball wrote:

Why would accountants voluntarily increase the cost of producing their largest input (CPAs) when the additional cost could not be passed on to clients? Economists have long been skeptical of occupational licensing. Adam Smith’s long discussion of apprenticeships concludes, among other things, that lengthening the required duration of apprenticeship increases the earnings of incumbents, denies the rights of those who now cannot enter, and provides no assurance of increased work quality. Echoing this, Milton Friedman observes that occupational licensing typically is advocated by producers, not consumers, on the alleged grounds of public and not personal interest. It is important to note that the AICPA vote to require an extra year of college for entry to the profession was conducted among its incumbent members (i.e., currently licensed accountants), and not among CPA firms (their employers). The Rule does look more like incumbent accountants voting to restrict entry than to enforce quality. It has reduced entry to the profession to a level that does not satisfy demand. And it has fallen more heavily on minorities.

When we say OG, we don’t mean a guy who’s slaved away over hot ledgers for 50 years, this guy is an O G. His bio reads:

Ray Ball is the Sidney Davidson Distinguished Service Professor of Accounting Emeritus at Booth. He pioneered the application of financial economics to accounting. He (with his co-author Philip Brown) was first to demonstrate the link between firms’ accounting earnings information and their market values. He also was first to identify the existence of systematic anomalies in efficient market theory. He has received many awards, including five honorary degrees and inductions to the American and Australian Accounting Halls of Fame.

He was elected to the Accounting Hall of Fame in 2009 and to the Australian Accounting Hall of Fame in 2018.

So yeah, direct any accusations of slander his way please.

The post A Tale of Two Reactions appeared first on Going Concern.

11 people at KPMG are celebrating today as the firm, them, and 29 people who worked at Credit Suisse will not be headed to the town pillory for misconduct related to the bank going down in flames last year.

Dozens of former Credit Suisse officials and the auditor KPMG won the dismissal of a U.S. shareholder lawsuit claiming they allowed 20 years of “continuous mismanagement” that led to the Swiss bank’s demise and takeover by UBS.

In a 92-page decision released on Thursday, U.S. District Judge Colleen McMahon in Manhattan said accusations that the defendants allowed the improper “plunder” of Credit Suisse did not support racketeering claims in the proposed class action.

And:

KPMG was accused of “active complicity,” with its New York offices being “all but part of” Credit Suisse’s nearby offices, before PricewaterhouseCoopers became the bank’s auditor in 2020.

Shares of Credit Suisse dropped as low as a little over two bucks on March 17, 2023, UBS swept in to buy CS for $3 billion, and then gave 1 UBS share for every 22.48 Credit Suisse shares held to shareholders. UBS Group AG is trading at $27.77 as of publication time.

Credit Suisse officials, KPMG beat US lawsuit over bank’s demise [Reuters]

The post KPMG Beat the Credit Suisse Lawsuit appeared first on Going Concern.

EY has announced plans to grow its Global Delivery Services (GDS) staff in Manila by 50 percent in the next two years, bringing the total from 5,000 to 7,500. These are the offshore staff working directly with EY member firms, half of whom do assurance work while the other half focus on tax and consulting.

Malaya Business Insight:

In a press conference, Andrea Catte, EY GDS Philippines tax co-leader and EY Asia-Pacific & EY Global Compliance and Reporting ( lead, said the company will boost staffing to 7,500 from the current 5,000.

Catte cited the English proficiency of workers as well as the rich talent pool of accounting and business graduates as an advantage of the Philippines, considered the second largest in EY GDS network globally after India.

Catte said EY GDS is focusing on technology including AI as well as in equipping the company’s workers with the right skills to remain competitive.

513 miles from Manila to the south, EY is also expanding its cyber operation in Cebu.

“Cebu is an excellent tech hub in the Philippines and is key to the growth strategy of EY GDS in the cybersecurity domain. We are truly excited to grow our presence in Cebu as well as in Manila and build upon our cyber skills and talents, further strengthening our services to support EY clients around the world,” said Maria Elizabeth “Maez” de Guzman, EY GDS Philippines Cybersecurity Leader.

According to De Guzman, EY GDS’ talent expansion plans are in response to the growing need for augmenting its pool of cybersecurity personnel, given the increasing occurrence of data breaches recently in the Philippines involving major national institutions.

According to the Philippine Daily Inquirer, EY’s Philippines operation has grown from 25 staff in 2015 to 5,000 as of 2023. The Manila GDS center opened in September 2019 followed by the Cebu City hub in October 2023. There are no current plans to open any new GDS centers in the Philippines that we know of.

The post EY Is Going on a Hiring Spree in the Philippines appeared first on Going Concern.

Reuters, just moments ago:

A U.S. federal government shutdown in coming weeks would likely disrupt the soon-to-start tax filing season for 2023 income, the head of the Internal Revenue Service said on Friday, even as the agency takes some steps to ensure that tax collections continue.

“We have experienced shutdowns before. We have not experienced shutdowns in the middle of filing season. So there’s some uncertainty there,” IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel told reporters.

He said the IRS “will do everything in our power” to minimize such disruptions, including by invoking authorities to maintain certain operations if government spending authority lapses later in January and in February.

“We’ll have a variety of different carve-out elements that will allow us to maintain operations,” he said, but a shutdown “will increase the risk that we don’t have as smooth a filing season as we intend to have.”

Funding is set to run out on the 19th, ten days before the official start of filing season. But don’t worry, everyone, they do this all the time. Granted, not right before filing season starts but all the time regardless.

Earlier:

The post Tax Season 2024 Hasn’t Even Started and It’s Off to a Fantastic Start appeared first on Going Concern.

While you’re here, let us say thanks for reading and we’ll see you in 2024. Now, the list.

#10.

#9.

#8.

#7.

#6.

#5.

#4.

#3.

#2.

And the biggest story of the year was…

#1.

Great job, Deloitte, you came in #1 yet again.

Happy New Year, everyone!

The post The Ten Most Read Stories of 2023 appeared first on Going Concern.

Ready?

And the damage:

• EY: ~130 partners (December)
• Grant Thornton: 200 (November)
• Baker Tilly: 180 (June)
• RSM: ? At least 20 (June)
• KPMG: 700 (June)
• Grant Thornton: 300 (May)
• Deloitte: 1200 (April)
• EY: 3000 (April)
• BDO USA: 85 (March)
• KPMG: ~2000 (February)

Considering what a rough year it was for the economy (though not necessarily firm revenue), it could have been a whole lot worse. Still bad. If attrition starts creeping up to normal levels as it looks like it might be, we don’t anticipate large personnel shake-ups in at least the first part of 2024. Though firms can always surprise us! Calling it now, if anyone does it’s going to be EY.

Stay billable, friends.

The post Here’s How Many People Were Laid Off From the Big Accounting Firms This Year (That We Know Of) appeared first on Going Concern.

Here’s what you need to know.

Average audit fees increased by 4.6 percent from 2021 to 2022

Of more than 6,200 clients, the average audit fee works out to $2.4 million (sauce).

Less than half — 47 percent — of member company respondents said they’ve had to increase their efforts to support the external audit, 51 percent said there’s been no change. Acquisitions are a big driver for increased effort, 21 percent of respondents credited it for the stepped up effort. That or changes to ICFR and divestitures.

Technology is doing a lot of heavy lifting in audit

Much like last year’s survey, 89 percent of preparers said their auditors are using advanced data and information analysis. Almost 80 percent of audit partners surveyed said they used data analytics and/or other emerging technologies in 2022 audits, that’s a five percent increase from prior year. On the client side, 64 percent of preparer respondents said they think the use of these technologies improved audit quality compared to 49 percent of them a year ago.

But AI Isn’t Big…Yet

36 percent of preparers surveyed said they plan to incorporate use of AI into their financial reporting within the next five years.

Musty audit rooms are back!

Better put that deodorant order on subscription, in-person auditing is definitely back.

More than 55 percent of audit partners surveyed say they expect their team will spend more than half of their time together, be that at the client site or at the firm’s office. The number of partners with this expectation has more than doubled from last year, less than 25 percent of audit partners surveyed for 2021 had this same expectation.

On the client side, 43 percent of preparer respondents expect their finance and accounting teams to spend 50 percent or more of their time together on-site supporting the audit during peak times. That’s an even bigger jump from less than 15 percent of them having this expectation last year.

More from CFO Magazine, including averages for large accelerated filers and much smaller filers, here: Audit Fees Rose Nearly 5% in 2022: Weekly Stat

The post Survey Says: Audit Fees Were Up Almost Five Percent in 2022, In-Person Audit Work Is Back appeared first on Going Concern.

The phys.org write up is titled:

Accounting is facing a labor crisis. Could fraud be part of the solution?

OMG they’re serious. And it says:

Expert concerns of a potential rise in financial fraud with fewer accounting professionals in the field notwithstanding, fraud plays a surprising role in the accounting labor force, according to new research from the University of Florida.

“Research to date suggests that financial fraud can have damaging consequences, like increased criminal activity as well as reduced trust and participation in capital markets,” said Assistant Professor Robert Carnes. “Insights from these studies imply that fraud would create a negative stigma around the labor market for all business fields, and accounting in particular, but we find the opposite.”

Carnes, along with co-authors Paul Madsen of the University of Florida and Dane Christensen of the University of Oregon, find that incoming students are actually more likely to major in accounting when local frauds occur during their formative years. Specifically, the researchers find a 4% increase in the likelihood of majoring in accounting when local financial frauds are covered by the news media during students’ formative high-school years.

“This size effect is modest,” Carnes explained. “But we view it as meaningful because it suggests that fraud does not harm the flow of students into the accounting major, but rather it attracts more students.”

The abstract explains further (emphasis ours):

Financial statement fraud generates many negative effects, including reducing people’s willingness to participate in the stock market. If it also stigmatizes accounting, it may similarly adversely affect the quantity and quality of workers willing to become accountants, thereby potentially creating negative effects for years to come. We examine the impact of fraud on the labor force entering the accounting profession, which is a key input into the production of accounting information (i.e., the output). Using data describing millions of college students across the United States, we find incoming students are actually more likely to major in accounting when local frauds occur during their formative years. These students are also more likely to have attributes desired by the accounting profession (e.g., high academic aptitude) and are more likely to subsequently serve in public accounting and become Certified Public Accountants. In the context of other fields (i.e., all college majors), we find that fraud similarly spurs interest in other business disciplines, but not in majors outside of business schools. Those attracted to other business disciplines, however, generally possess different traits. Specifically, students entering accounting are distinctively more likely to exhibit values espoused by the accounting profession, including a predisposition to public service and less commercial orientation. Thus, nonpecuniary motives appear to uniquely drive accounting student enrollment following fraud. Collectively, our findings suggest that, while fraud is unmistakably bad, it appears to have the positive unintended consequence of attracting labor into business disciplines and, in accounting, increasing the prevalence of desirable traits among entrants.

Well clearly there have to be some nonpecuniary motives at work otherwise accounting graduate numbers would be even lower than they already are.

The data also suggests that accounting graduates with higher rates of fraud exposure in high school are more likely to work in public accounting, work for a Big 4 firm, and become CPAs. So get to frauding, people!

The post Who Had ‘Do More Fraud’ on Their Things That Could Save the Accounting Profession Bingo Card? appeared first on Going Concern.

Says the AICPA, bachelor’s degree completions in accounting dropped 7.8% from 2021–2022 after steady decline of 1-3% per year since 2015–16. Master’s degree completions also fell in 2021–2022 (-6.4%) but the percentage decline is significantly less than in 2019–20.

65,035 total accounting degrees completed for 2021-22. So 3,964 fewer bachelor’s and 1,246 fewer master’s for a total of 5,480. Since accounting graduate numbers peaked in 15-16, here’s the difference by year compared to prior year. As always, accountants are encouraged to audit the math:

• 2016-17: 1,336
• 2017-18: 394
• 2018-19: 2,204
• 2019-20: 3,391
• 2020-21: 2,408
• 2021-22: 5,480

Comparing the latest report to 2015-16 that’s 14,819 fewer BS and MS degrees for 2021-22.

Anyway, while we crunch some numbers and work up some obnoxiously snarky observations on the 2023 Trends report, you can catch up on where we were when the 2021 report was released in early 2022: State of the Accounting Profession 2022 Via the AICPA Trends Report

The post The 2023 AICPA Trends Report Shows Things Are Looking Up For Accounting Grad Numbers! JK They Suck appeared first on Going Concern.

Fun!

Key findings from the survey of 307 full-time CFOs in the US and UK:

• CFOs both sides of the pond are facing a talent crisis
  • 8 in 10 (81%) US and UK CFOs report a talent shortage in accounting roles.
  • Two-thirds (63%) of US and UK CFOs attribute this to a lack of experienced talent. Employee burnout (47%) and accounting and finance talent changing careers (47%) were also notable factors for the diminishing talent pool.
• However, as recession concerns loom, CFOs can’t afford a talent crisis.
  • To weather economic storms, half of CFOs (51%) are operating in “cutback mode” in preparation for an economic downturn.
• To help deal with the talent shortfall, CFOs are turning to AI
  • Almost all (92%) US and UK CFOs agree that AI tools will help businesses, with 89% planning to invest in AI to streamline finance functions and alleviate the global talent shortage in accounting.
• These changes may be happening quicker than we think, with nearly half (44%) of CFOs set to adopt AI by the end of 2023.

The belief that AI can save us from the critical talent shortage was echoed in Thomson Reuters’ 2023 State of Corporate Tax Department report released last month. In that particular report, more corporate tax leaders prioritized improving processes (32%) and acquiring additional software (14%) than hiring and maintaining staff (12%).

Two more interesting bits from Avalara’s survey:

• Nearly half (49%) of CFOs report the need for Financial Planning and Analysis (FP&A) expertise within their organizations
• Two-thirds (63%) of CFOs believe there’s a lack of experienced talent, a view supported by over half (54%) of respondents that consider today’s shortage a result of fewer people majoring in finance functions.

Once again we must remind you to keep all this in mind when you’re negotiating your next gig.

The post Research: A Majority of CFOs Face Significant Talent Shortage and Burnout of Existing Staff appeared first on Going Concern.

“I always do an icebreaker at every start of every meeting,” says Golden, adding that, “an easy one is, ‘you have 30 seconds, go grab something, no matter where you are, and you have to come back and in less than 30 seconds, you have to tell us why you grabbed it.’”

This also helps people disconnect and get some blood flowing in their brains and bodies, and puts “an ease to solving some of the challenges that you’re solving in that 30 minutes,” she says.

Appropriate Twitter response:

*grabs resignation letter*

— Monero Matteo (@moneromatteo) September 29, 2023

Well she’s on Make It again and this time she’s offering up a tip on how to make your resume stand out among the pack:

personality

“I think when the resume can exude some personality is the most eye catching to me,” she said.

Other than using crayons to create it how exactly does one zhuzh a resume up with personality?

Listing the multiple languages you speak or including that you’ve “traveled around the world 17 times,” says Golden, are examples of what can round you out on your resume. You could include athletic or artistic accomplishments as well. And volunteer work is effective because “you’re there because you love it,” she says. “You’re not there because you were told to do it and I think that actually says a lot, too, about your personality.”

You could also “think about what makes you happy and what you want from that job and put it in a sentence,” she says. She gives the example of her own job and the kind of thing she could say to describe her passion for it. Why does she want to be in innovation?

“I really want to solve really hard problems,” she says. “I’m really good at solving really hard problems.”

Now you could put these under “Interests” somewhere at the bottom of your resume but that’s not what she advises:

But Golden would advocate for putting those pieces even higher up. “Put the good nugget at the top of the resume,” she says. You could include a line about your passions in a professional summary, for example.

Remember, complaining about your job on Reddit is not a passion.

The post Deloitte Exec With a Stupid Title Has a Tip to Make Your Resume Stand Out appeared first on Going Concern.

Said Deloitte UK chief executive Richard Houston via statement:

“Today we announced some targeted restructuring across our businesses, which may — subject to consultation — put some roles at risk of redundancy. This follows a slowdown in growth, which, combined with the ongoing economic uncertainty, means we have to consider the shape of our business. I fully understand this is an unsettling time for those people affected and we will be doing everything we can to support individuals with care and respect.”

It was just six days ago that Deloitte Global announced record-breaking revenue of $64.9 billion for its last fiscal year, not only a record for Deloitte but for every global accounting firm ever in the entire history of global accounting firms. As FN reported last September, distributable profit at Deloitte UK was up 21 percent to £711 million ($888 million USD) for the year to May 31, 2022, bringing last year’s average profit per partner to £1.05 million.

The layoffs will continue until morale attrition improves.

The post Layoff Watch ’23: Deloitte UK Cuts More Than 800 People Because Business is Slow and People Aren’t Quitting appeared first on Going Concern.

Here are the key findings:

• 52 percent of Canadian students are using generative AI to assist them in their schoolwork
• 60 percent of students who use generative AI for their schoolwork feel that it constitutes cheating
• Almost nine in 10 (87 percent) say generative AI improved the quality of their schoolwork
• 68 percent say their grades improved after using generative AI
• 81 percent believe all students should learn how to use generative AI tools much in the same way that coding has become a crucial skill
• 72 percent want more courses on how to use generative AI and an equal percentage (72 percent) want their educators to use generative AI in the classroom to enhance the educational learning process
• 76 percent say the more they use generative AI, the more excited they are about its potential
• 65 percent say the more they use generative AI, the more worried they are about what it’s capable of
• Only 14 percent agreed strongly that their educators are using generative AI in the classroom (e.g., create new teaching materials, generating questions or personalized study plans, creating games and simulations, providing personalized real-time feedback, etc.)

So what are students using AI for? Idea generation, mostly. Though more than a third are using it to write essays or reports.

• Idea generation (70 percent)
• Research (55 percent)
• Writing essays or reports (39 percent)

Almost 70 percent of students surveyed admit they always or sometimes claim AI-generated content as their own original work. And only 37 percent say they always do a fact-check of AI-generated content.

Here’s the bit that’s relevant to us old working people: the research found that significantly more students than employed working professionals have embraced generative AI (52 percent vs. 19 percent, respectively).

“The growing popularity of these tools puts a lot of pressure on educators and educational institutions to quickly develop and communicate guiding principles and guardrails on how they should be used. But the dilemma is, where do you draw the line?,” says C.J. James, Partner and National Education Practice Leader, KPMG in Canada. “With so many students feeling like they’re cheating by claiming AI-generated content as their own original work, that’s a big problem. Educators will need to become AI literate and students need to know what’s expected of them.”

With the clear demand from students to learn best practices around generative AI, educators and educational institutions have an opportunity to expand their academic curriculum by offering courses, including AI ethics, says Ms. James.

The post KPMG Canada Research: 60 Percent of Students Think AI Is Cheating, 52 Percent Use It For Schoolwork Anyway appeared first on Going Concern.

Ranked on more than 50 metrics, these top performers produce superior financial and operational results while maintaining a solid foundation for growth, ensuring clients and staff alike a successful future.

Chosen from 600 U.S. and Canadian firms that participated in IPA’s 33rd Practice Management Survey, the 2023 IPA Best of the Best come in all sizes, ranging from $3.2 million to $1.6 billion in net revenue. In addition to the 60 Best of the Best firms with net revenue of $10 million or more, IPA has also named 10 Best of the Best firms under $10 million, as well as five high-performing Canadian firms, ranging in size from $9.5 million to $48.9 million in net revenue. As has been the case for the last three decades, Best of the Best firms take different approaches to running their businesses to thrive within a constantly shifting economic environment.

“These forward-thinking firms have faced an unprecedented labor shortage and economic uncertainty, but they keep their focus despite the headwinds,” says Charles Hylan, managing director at The Growth Partnership. “They don’t sacrifice long-term gains for short-term wins.”

Of the 60 firms that appear in the “Best over $10 million” category we’re only going to hit the first ten sorted by highest revenues for the sake of brevity. FORVIS is the real star here as the only firm on the list to top more than a billion in revenue ($1,685,539,000).

Montreal’s Demers Beaulne came in top by revenue of the Canadians at $48.9 million and Houston’s Aycock & Company narrowly missed the over ten million category at $9.4 million. You can see those categories along with the rest of the list here.

Congrats to all except the web designers who will be tasked with plopping a low-res “Best of the Best” graphic somewhere on the firm’s website.

IPA Unveils The 2023 Best of the Best Accounting Firms [INSIDE Public Accounting]

The post Rejoice, IPA Has Dropped Its List of ‘Best of the Best’ Public Accounting Firms appeared first on Going Concern.

The press release courtesy the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Northern District of Texas:

Christiane Kathleen Irwin, 44, was indicted in March 2022. She pleaded guilty to wire fraud before U.S. Magistrate Judge Toliver.

According to court documents, Ms. Irwin, who worked for a law firm and was responsible for submitting payroll each week, falsely inflated her salary, which was set at approximately $140,000 annually.

In accordance with her fraudulent payroll submission, the firm’s payroll vendor transferred her purported pay from the firm’s bank account into her bank account every two weeks.

Over the course of three years, from 2019 to 2021, Ms. Irwin took home $1.48 million in fraudulently obtained funds.

She now faces up to 20 years in federal prison. Her sentencing date is slated for Jan. 3, 2024. Irwin has agreed that the loss amount to the firm for restitution is over $1.48 million.

We’ll keep you posted on the outcome if anyone cares.

The post Unsatisfied With Her $140k Salary, Law Firm Controller Gave Herself a Raise appeared first on Going Concern.

Without any further blathering on, here are ten things firms should prioritize in recruiting:

1. Assess whether candidates are a good fit for your firm on both a professional and personal level
2. Ensure the salary offered is genuinely competitive
3. Offer flexible working arrangements
4. Highlight your firm’s work environment and
5. Have the patience to find top-quality candidates
6. Offer attractive benefits and incentives
7. Have a transparent interview process
8. Offer learning and training opportunities
9. Make use of recruiting agencies
10. Advertise across multiple and diverse recruiting channels

So really that’s two compensation-related items (competitive salary and attractive benefits/incentives). Under item two they say:

Are you familiar with the market rate for the job role you’re trying to fulfill? Take the time to research the salaries of similar roles at other companies, as well as any comparable job descriptions, experience levels, and qualifications you are seeking. You may also want to look at the job market in your area to identify any regional differences in salaries for related positions.

Employers: this means if you want a CPA you better pay for it. Same goes for X years of experience. You might be able to save a few bucks if you offer a slightly less in salary but cap hours at 35, are fully remote, have an excellent health plan, and subsidize doggy day care/gym memberships/XBoxes/whatever. You don’t get to pay people less and expect them to grind out 60 hours a week, in office, with nothing but free K-pods and a company-provided wrist rest. Do better.

Item six elaborates on this point:

On top of the usual benefits like competitive salaries, paid time off, and flexible work arrangements, you can also appeal to candidates by offering:

• Comprehensive health and dental plans
• Tuition reimbursement
• Retirement plans
• Gym memberships
• Career development opportunities

Your firm can also offer additional incentives such as bonuses for exceptional performance and other rewards based on the length of their employment.

It really is that simple.

The post These 10 Tips for Successful Accounting Firm Recruitment Aren’t Terrible At All appeared first on Going Concern.

Here’s what FT said:

EY’s auditors outside the US are failing a higher number of quality inspections by American regulators, according to the firm’s internal estimates, as US authorities push to improve global standards they fear were hit by the coronavirus pandemic.

Inspections of EY’s work for US-listed companies uncovered deficiencies in up to 38 per cent of the audits carried out by the firm’s overseas businesses last year, according to estimates described to the Financial Times.

That would be a big jump from 2021, when 21 per cent of audits sampled by the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board contained deficiencies.

The figures do not include inspections of audits carried out by EY’s US business — the largest in its global network — and could be lower if the firm successfully pushes back against concerns raised by the PCAOB before inspection reports are finalised. However, they hint at a trend since the pandemic that has alarmed the regulator.

The PCAOB inspected 37 audits carried out by EY’s non-US businesses last year, and EY estimated that the increase in deficiencies would be largely consistent across the Americas, Europe and Asia-Pacific.

Said EY to FT, “[The firm] actively reviews audit quality results from both internal and external monitoring. The figures reported by the Financial Times are from a preliminary stage of that process, during which areas for additional focus are identified. The figures do not reflect the ultimate conclusions drawn from that process.”

EY expects more failing grades from US audit inspectors [FT]

The post EY’s Getting Ready For Bad Grades From the PCAOB For Overseas Colleagues’ Work (Allegedly) appeared first on Going Concern.

EY all hands, people do not seem happy.

Staff on the call were told the firm will be focused on ‘delayering’ in fiscal 2024. And then little more was said, leaving the non-consultants to have to Google what that even means.

Comment
by u/TheR2DP from discussion EY Global All-Hands
in Big4

So what is delayering? From some HR rag:

Delayering is the process of removing layers of hierarchy between the highest and lowest levels in order to boost operational efficiency, decrease the wage bill and remove red tape. Delayering typically removes middle managers, providing senior managers easier reach over the organisation as a whole.

Commonly cited advantages of delayering include increases in engagement and motivation as more responsibility is afforded to ‘on the ground’ workers to make decisions, instead of being told what to do by middle managers. Communication may also increase as there are fewer levels of information to become lost in translation and bottom-up feedback may also increase as employees’ feel their views have more chance of being heard by decision-makers.

Despite the value of delayering, there are disadvantages. Senior leaders tend to gain more control over decision-making with reduced oversight, which means the effects of poor individual decision-making may be felt more acutely. The flatter organisational structures created by delayering may work in particular industries but may be unsuitable for others, and the redundancies associated with delayering may affect worker morale.

So layoffs then. Layoffs wearing a costume made of organizational inefficiencies.

Conveniently enough I found a Deloitte paper on the topic [PDF] and would you look at this:

Some organizations use delayering as a quick fix solution to address common organizational issues such as uncompetitive (or high) operational costs and slow organizational responsiveness. Often times, these issues are only symptoms of much bigger challenges such as:

• Weak organizational discipline in spending (e.g., weak spend policies and lack of a cost-conscious culture)
• Poor organization design (e.g., functional duplication and accountability overlaps)
• Unsuitable career development process (only creating development opportunities through layering)
• Skill gaps at critical positions
• Weak decision-making / governance model

Understanding the root cause of organizational issues requires a thorough, broad-based organizational assessment to evaluate the current state of the organization across various dimensions (e.g., cost, people, structure and processes). Delayering, as a standalone event, is unlikely to bring sustainable cost savings. This can be likened to crash dieting. One can probably shed some weight short term, but may put the weight back on, and sometimes more. Plus, it’s a lot of short-term pain, often for little to no long-term gain. And sometimes it can even do irreparable damage.

Yeah, definitely layoffs. Drop more details on today’s call if you have them.

Earlier and probably related: EY Tells Staff to Get Ready for Some Cuts After the Everest Embarrassment [UK]

The post Google Searches For the Word ‘Delayering’ Up 558% Since Today’s EY Global All-Hands Call appeared first on Going Concern.

The article also says job postings at Deloitte, EY, and KPMG across all service lines were down 76% in July from the year before per analysis by investment bank William Blair & Co. They don’t track PwC “due to an inability to determine the number of positions on its internal job postings board” but PwC recruiters we’ve spoken to say they’re still doing plenty of hiring. The decrease in hiring is attributed to low attrition, decreased client demand for services, and firms overhiring prior to the business slowdown. Commenters are welcome to drop their own theories in the comments.

So there’s no shortage then, right?

Big Four Accounting Firms Pare Their Consultant Ranks in Postpandemic Reversal [WSJ]

The post Just How Many People Left Big 4 Firms Last Year? appeared first on Going Concern.

Wrote The Telegraph on Sunday:

KPMG is giving extra training to its graduate recruits and hauling them into the office more regularly amid concerns that lockdown damaged Gen Z’s development and confidence.

The Big Four accounting and consulting firm has overhauled its graduate training programme after noticing that its “lockdown generation” recruits were finding it difficult to adapt to working life, sources told The Telegraph.

It comes after bosses at the firm observed that some of its new junior staff were lacking in confidence when it came to basic skills like working in teams and project management.

The firm, which is one of Britain’s biggest graduate recruiters, will now provide classes on “soft skills”, such as how to give presentations in person and how to work in a team.

The firm hired around a thousand new graduates in the UK last year and is expecting to increase that to about 1,500 this year.

KPMG has been doing new hire orientation completely remote since the pandemic, they’re now pivoting to three days in the office and two at home. The idea being that shy young recruits need to be socialized, much like how one would tame feral kittens by forcing them to be held and pet. Hopefully there’s less hissing involved.

“There’s no doubt that the pandemic has impacted recent graduates and apprentices, who are now joining the workforce,” said Jon Holt, KPMG UK CEO. “They have missed out on a lot. If I think back to my own time at the University of Nottingham it’s hard to imagine how my experiences – including the friendships I formed – might have been affected by lockdowns.”

“I admire their resilience and it’s important that as a business we support them as they begin their training and careers with us,” he added. “This includes offering additional courses to help them build soft skills, as well as training them in the big issues facing our clients such as ESG and technology.”

Bro, these kids are afraid of their own shadow, who gives a flying flip about ESG?

Related:

Big 4 Firms Are Noticing a Sudden Skills Gap in New Hires

The post ‘Lockdown-Damaged’ New Hires Struggle to Socialize at KPMG UK appeared first on Going Concern.

That leaves just one Big 4 firm. Here’s what PwC had to say about the possibility of layoffs:

So far PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP is the only one of the “Big Four” accounting firms that has not announced layoffs and said it had no plans to. The firm did allude to attrition in a statement to The Business Journals, but stressed that it did not serve to reduce overall headcount — and that it occurred year-round.

“We are not planning layoffs currently as a firm,” the company said in a statement.

PwC said “attrition is a natural part of our high-performing culture, so too is our philosophy of shared success.”

Attrition seems to be the word of the day. KPMG said in their Monday statement that “economic headwinds, coupled with historically low attrition” led the firm to make the decision to let people go. As much as we at Going Concern get a thrill out of calling bullshit, it looks like firms of all sizes are dealing with low attrition and therefore higher numbers of people who are choosing not to jump. Because leavers are specifically accounted for in firms’ business plans, that means churn must be forced if it doesn’t happen naturally. So that’s where we are.

We’ve heard from sources inside PwC that performance matters much more this year than last year and various posts on Reddit and Fishbowl confirm exactly that. See:

Beware of “performance-based” layoffs
Is PwC doing silent layoffs and calling it performance based?

And this recent thread on Fishbowl:

How has PwC not had layoffs make the news? I’ve heard so many friends getting silently laid off this past month, but not sure what’s true.

Posts all seem to use the same creepy language about people disappearing as if they were raptured or something.

On the other hand, you have plenty of OG commenters who say this happens every year (it does, to an extent) and that recent performance-based separations are just that, performance-based. If we believe what PwC sources have told us, it’s just that the definition of low performer has widened to include more people.

Stay billable, friends.

The post PwC Goes on Record to Say There Will Not Be Layoffs (Not Loud Ones Anyway) appeared first on Going Concern.