NonprofitEye

Whistle-Blowing - Keep it in Perspective by pam ashlund I want you to get up right now, sit up, go to your windows, open them and stick your head out and yell - ' I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore! ' Things have got to change. But first, you've gotta get mad!... You've got to say, 'I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!' Then we'll figure out what to do about the depression and the inflation and the oil crisis. But first get up out of your chairs, open the window, stick your head out, and yell, and say it! -- Howard Beale during his nervous breakdown, Network, 1976 I've blogged about whistleblowing, about fraud detection, about Enron, about Sarbanes Oxley...for gods sake I've blogged about blogging! I've pondered the subject from many an angle and then...I lost interest. Why? Because there's only so much to say. Hey, somebody does something wrong, somebody else tells on them. Then?...

The Hazards of Revenue Recognition for Non-profits by pam ashlund "New" nonprofit rules for recognizing revenue were established by the Financial Accounting Standards Board back in 1993 (FASB 116), links summarized in a previous post . Then why now is the subject of Revenue Recognition suddenly so important? File it under “Blame it on Enron”. When this infamous company decided to recognize revenue based on their projection of future sales (NOT completed sales), they opened the door to a previously unimaginable new chapter in the ongoing novel of Fictional Accounting. The guys who came up with this scam were known as " The Smartest Men in the Room ". Were they? The answer is yes (and no) and yes. Madness in the Method? Even though their method was clearly preposterous, the lesson we can learn from their sad example is that accounting is mostly, but not ALL hard science. Many accounting decisions involve significant “management discretion”. Any area of accounting that...