Audit report? Just a copy only!

With more cases coming out, it seems that either our concept about audit report is wrong or it should have a new name.

"PwC withdraws reports for bankrupt oil firm Yukos"

"BDO Seidman snags guilty verdict"

If you read these reports, you may agree with me that audit may have a new meaning, "an uncertain dressing inappropriately true".

Of course, there is nothing wrong with the accusation about missing information and fictitious invoices. Basing on such saying by top audit firms, then it is the audit reports readers' problem.

May be we do not need auditing at all because there is no way to safeguard against frauds. Or we may need another level of auditing, the audit of audited reports.

Ever since the Enron case, there is too much bad news about accounting. So what is the ethics that required now? Oh, just for examination only.

A new site for UFASS

In order to promote the UFASS and support clients, I have a new site, www.ufass.com.hk. Besides information about UFASS, there will be other supporting development later for SMEs in HK and Macau. Orders will be accepted as from July 1, 2007.

My other site, accounting.uscforesight.com, will change to information about accounting, IFAC's international standards etc.

Now IFAC has a global survey about Financial Reports, IFAC Launches Survey on the Financial Reporting Supply Chain. All SMEs should try their best to join this survey. That will help IFAC to work for better and suitable standards.

I do believe that regional standards will be applied for some more years. Of course, it depends on how the international standards to meet regional specifications.

As mentioned in the new website, it is not only the standards, all SMEs, especially their CEOs, will need to manage the finance better. A sound management establishment needs suitable tool, my UFASS will be one of their choices.

Finally, UFASS will be available

It has been postponed one month, two months and I did not know when I would finish the project.

Some told me that it was normal for IT project. I admit that there is no other way because I needed time to figure what to do with some difficult topic.

The basic goal of the UFASS project is to meet the Financial Reporting Standards, regionally for HK and Macau.

That is not hard for me because I have accounting and programming experience almost simultaneously. Reason for me to take up programming is because at that time I needed to prepare reports and I found that the available programs failed to give any support for me. So I asked my boss to buy a PC for me and a tool to get the data from the IBM 36, then I started to write programs to meet my needs.

So what are the problems?

First, it is a certainty that one day all financial reporting would be required to meet international standards. It is on the way as IFAC expected to have the final version at the end of 2007. Therefore, I need to be sure that UFASS users can face such change without additional works.

Second, since big accounting frauds got the attention of everyone, CEOs have to take the responsibilities whenever such frauds happened. Of course, there are many cases that accountants were forced to do bad things due to bad CEOs or CFOs. That is not my concern because bad CEOs, even the corporations belong to SME group, will not be my clients. The best tool for them is Excel etc. that they can change anything they like. For my future clients, I have to prepare a way so that CEOs can access to the accounting easily.

By further investigation, I read the reports from ACFE, viz. 2006, 2004 and 2002. I admit that I have astonished from the reports that accountants had been on top of white-collar crime. If you are owner or CEO of SME and have not yet read these reports, you must read it because you may not aware of some dangerous concept we have.

In fact, I do not mean to work against accountants. Definitely now, I had been one of them for over twenty years and I got the experience of how hard for accountant to work when every other one in the office just failed to meet any documentation requirements.

My UFASS will offer an efficient tool for accountants to meet the new requirement and a management tool for CEOs to safeguard against frauds. It is the system that we need to guarantee everyone is doing the right thing. Good guy may turn bad if there is the chance and some unexpected urgent need.

When I first read management books years ago, I did admire the American way of management. It is based on system control and not human relationship, performance instead of years of services etc. Unfortunately there are many top ones in American tried to override the good system for personal gains and we have lots of examples.

Well, I have decided that I need a date for me to offer UFASS to clients. Now, I have a new website for promotion, UFASS.COM.HK, starting today (Jun. 1, 2007) and orders will be accepted from Jul. 1, 2007.