Technical Accounting and Auditing Standards Update

Full day technical update organised by ACCA and South Coast Audit.  Presented by Charles Gubbins BSc CA.

AM: Mainly IFRS updates with some UKGAAP.
PM: Governance and audit.

Particular points of interest:

• Treatment of leases still moving.  Moving towards capitalisation of all leases but distinction between operating and finance leases will remain.
• Profit and loss account to change again and become 'Statement of Profit or Loss and other comprehensive income'.
• Sustainability: not a requirement to report this yet but need to be in a position to do so.  In particular, business mileages, gas, electricity and this information for any major subcontractors.
• UK Corporate Governance code

Certificate

e-security at home

This CPD mainly with my school governor hat on.

Attended talk about e-security given by ESCC expert.  Main points:

• Web blocking filtering software cannot be relied on and education is better approach
• Monitoring and on-going discussion with children is essential
• Recommended that if child opposes monitoring, they are reminded that their computer use at school is monitored, as will be their use at work.  Advised to warn child before check (at least the first time) to give them a chance to clear anything they know they are concerned about.  Stress that most information once uploaded to the web cannot be erased.
• Discuss high profile cases in press and analyse what went wrong
• If web filters are too harsh, child is likely to find a way around - such as using a friend's computer
• Discuss photos with children and ask if appropriate for posting on web - remember to look in the background (calendar showing when on holiday) or 'photo of me outside my house with road name'.

NHS updates

Read the following articles from HFMA and HSJ to keep my NHS CPD up to date (these links may require subscriptions and or passwords to access because of copyright constraints).

Service line management and service line reporting (SLM and SLR)
Procurement - improving value
Single operating model for GP clusters
Organisational report poses 'catastrophic' data risk

Can Cloud Computing Clear the Air?

Read this article from CFO exploring some of the corporate effects of Cloud computing.

The Cloud - battle of the Titans

Read this article in Bloomberg.  A long article, it looks at some of the strategic and structural issues of moving to the Cloud.  I like the analogy at the end - computing is like electricity generation.  Most companies now have their computing power in-house but soon they will realise that it's better to get one of the big suppliers to do it so them - it gives more capacity and ultimately, is cheaper and more reliable.  Includes brief mentions of data security concerns.

First impressions of Microsoft Office 365

See my main blog for this post.

The no nonsense business case for cloud accounting AccMan

Read this interesting article about Cloud Accounting - strategic in nature and looking at possible future of big players including Microsoft.

The no nonsense business case for cloud accounting AccMan