What is Accountant Responsibility?

Accountant responsibility is the ethical responsibility an accountant has to those who rely on their work. According to the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA), accountants have a duty to serve the public interest and uphold the public trust in the profession. An accountant has a responsibility to his clients, his company’s managers, investors, and creditors, as well as to outside regulatory bodies. Accountants are responsible for the validity of the financial statements they work on, and they must perform their duties following all applicable principles, standards, and laws.

Understanding Accountant Responsibility

Accountant responsibility varies slightly based on the accountant’s relationship with the tax filer or business in question. Independent accountants with some clients see confidential information, ranging from personal Social Security numbers to business sales data, and must observe accountant-client privilege. They cannot share private personal or business data with competitors or others.

Accountants who work for accounting firms also have a responsibility to keep information private, but they also have a responsibility to their firm. Namely, they must accurately track their hours and tasks completed. For example, an accountant performing an audit should only record items he has actually completed, rather than pretending he has completed items he has not in order to speed up the process or bolster his logged hours.

If an accountant works directly for a business, as an in-house accountant, he has access to information many others in the company do not, ranging from payroll figures to news about staff layoffs, and he also has to treat this information discretely. In addition to having a responsibility to the people who work at the company, in-house accountants are also responsible to stockholders and creditors. If accountants do not uphold their responsibilities, it can have a broad effect on the accounting industry and even the financial markets.

Accountant Responsibility and the Internal Revenue Service

Although accountants have a great deal of responsibility to their clients, if the Internal Revenue Service finds an error in an individual’s tax return, it does not hold the tax preparer or accountant responsible. Rather, the IRS adjusts the return and holds the taxpayer responsible for the additional tax, fees, and penalties. However, an individual who has been wronged by an accountant’s misconduct can bring a claim of negligence against the accountant based on the fact the accountant breached his duty to the client and caused personal or financial damages.

The IRS also accepts complaints about tax return preparers who have committed fraud, and anyone with an issue may submit a complaint using Form 14157, Complaint: Tax Return Preparer. In-house accountants who cook the books or purposefully include erroneous data in their company’s tax returns or accounting documents are responsible for misconduct and may even be criminally liable.

Accountant Responsibility and External Audits

According to the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB), accountants performing external audits have the responsibility to obtain reasonable assurance about whether the client’s financial statements are free of material misstatement, whether caused by error or fraud. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX) added new audit responsibilities relating to fraud. External auditors now have to certify that a client’s internal controls are adequate in addition to expressing an opinion on the financial statements.

What Is Accountability?

Accountability is an acceptance of responsibility for honest and ethical conduct towards others. In the corporate world, a company’s accountability extends to its shareholders, employees, and the wider community in which it operates. In a wider sense, accountability implies a willingness to be judged on performance.

Understanding Accountability

Accountability has become an essential concept in corporate finance. It is particularly relevant to the accounting practices that a company adopts when it prepares the financial reports that are submitted to shareholders and the government. Without checks, balances, and consequences for wrongdoing, a company cannot retain the confidence of its customers, regulators, or the markets.

However, in recent years corporate accountability has come to encompass the company’s activities as they affect the community. A company’s environmental impact, its investment decisions, and its treatment of its own employees all have come under public scrutiny.

Types of Accountability

The concept of accountability runs throughout all industries, sectors, companies, and professions. Here is an overview of where accountability is most prevalent in the business sector.

Corporate Accountability

At its most prosaic, accountability is about the numbers. Every public company is required to publish a financial report quarterly and annually detailing its income and expenses. An independent auditor reviewing a company’s financial statements is responsible for obtaining reasonable assurance that the financial statements are free from any material misstatements caused by error or fraud. This auditor is holding the company accountable for its reporting.

Accountability requires corporate accountants to be careful and knowledgeable, as they can be held legally liable for negligence. An accountant is responsible for the integrity and accuracy of the company’s financial statements, even if an error or misstatement was made by others in the organization. This is why independent outside accountants audit the financial statements. Public companies are required to have an audit committee within the board of directors. Their job is to oversee the audit.

Political Accountability

Political accountability can relate to political contributions and how candidates use resources. For example, the non-partisan Center for Political Accountability and the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania jointly publish an annual index rating the disclosure and oversight policies of major public corporations regarding their donations to political causes and candidates.

These scandals resulted in tougher regulations, and there are armies of regulators and private watchdogs working to make sure that companies report their earnings correctly, that the exchanges execute trades in a timely fashion, and that information provided to investors is timely and accurate.

The Center shines a spotlight on corporate spending to influence politicians. Recently, the Center reported in-depth on a campaign by the pharmaceutical industry to head off a proposal to allow Medicare to negotiate drug prices with vendors. The report named the names of members of Congress who accepted political donations from drugmakers.

Government Accountability

The role of corporate cash is only one of the global issues regarding government accountability.

USAID, the federal agency that administers civilian foreign aid, defines measures government accountability by these key factors: a free and fair political justice system; protection of human rights; a vibrant civil society; public confidence in the police and courts, and security sector reform.

To aid in protecting citizens, the Government Accountability program protects federal, state, and local whistleblowers who spot problems and report them to appropriate agencies. In this model, governments are held accountable through unofficial, internal audit. Anyone can report anyone else for improper behavior, forcing accountability to be systematic and prevalent throughout organizations.

Media Accountability

The media in the U.S. is uniquely protected by the First Amendment from interference by Congress. This does not mean that it is free from accountability.

The media have long been under the constant scrutiny of a number of watchdogs, internal and external. In the internet era, these have been augmented by independent fact-checking organizations such as FactCheck.org, Snopes, and PolitiFact. These and other organizations monitor the media for bias and errors and publish their findings for all to see.

Now, through the introduction of social media, individuals can now easily contribute to media. There is arguement whether the platforms (i.e. Facebook) it is a publisher or if the users of the platform are the publishers. In either case, social media continues to be under fire for spreading dangerous misinformation, providing a platform for hate speech, and having a generally lacking sense of accountability.

Accountability in the Workplace

For companies to be successful, employees must conduct themselves with accountability. This is done is several ways.

First, there are soft skill aspects of accountability. Accountability includes showing up to work when expected and showing up to work prepared for the tasks for the day. Accountability extends to every department and every employee, as it starts with being present, honest, and engaged in every day tasks outside of one’s job.

There is also a deep rooted sense of accountability in specific positions. Professionals who handle physical or digital money have a standard of accountability to be honest and responsible with funds that do not belong to them personally. Managers have a duty of accountability to properly oversee employees, treat them well, and guide them through growth opportunities.

There’s a few ways a company builds, manages, and sustains accountable practices, such as:

• Making employees verbally commit to completing certain tasks and ensuring them follow through with these tasks.
• Having upper management set expectations on the duties to be completed and the associated deadlines.
• Creating a safe environment where taking risks is rewarded and learning occurs in a natural, non-threatening way.
• Defining ownership of tasks, projects, or other aspects of work. Should there be a problem, the owner of that task or project must be held accountable.

Benefits of Accountability

Accountability will be different at every company. However, there are overarching benefits that accountability can provide should a business be able to appropriately execute accountability practices:

• Accountability promotes operational excellence. When employees understand that their work is being looked at and will be evaluated, they are more likely to put forth stronger effort as it is understood that what they do matters. This is especially true when employees are rewarded for strong accountability with raises, promotions, and public recognition.
• Accountability safeguards company resources. Accountability is not limited to just doing your job; it is the practice of being honest and responsible for your actions in all situations. When employees are accountable, they are held to a standard that company resources are to be respected, and employees are less like to mistreat company assets as they understand there will be consequences for their actions.
• Accountability yields more accurate results. Companies with a standard of accountability will have boundaries of acceptable deviation. For example, a company may allow for a certain dollar threshold of financial misstatement due to immateriality. If a company holds itself accountable to a low threshold of materiality, it will not accept larger errors, unexplainable variances, or delays in reporting.
• Accountability builds external investor trust. An investor’s confidence in a company is only driven so far based off of the prospect of financial success. Investors must believe that a company is well-run, honest, competent, and efficient with its resources. If a company can demonstrate their accountability, they will be seen more favorable, especially compared against an untrustworthy adversary.

Accountability in the Real World

Corporate accountability can be hard to quantify but that doesn’t stop anyone from trying.

The publication Visual Capitalist ranked the best performing U.S. corporations on environmental, social, and corporate governance issues. The top performer on environmental issues was HP, which has decreased its greenhouse gas emissions by 44% since 2015. General Motors got the highest marks for social responsibility as the only U.S. company with a woman as both CEO and CFO. Qualcomm topped the list in corporate governance due to its introduction of STEM programs for women and minorities.

Some high-profile accounting scandals in the past demonstrated that a public company cannot continue to exist if it loses the trust of the financial markets and regulators.

The erstwhile energy giant Enron collapsed in 2001, taking the venerable accounting firm Arthur Andersen with it after its false accounting methods were exposed. The global financial crisis in 2008–2009 revealed gross financial speculation by some of the nation’s biggest banking institutions. The LIBOR scandal revealed currency rate manipulation by several London banks.

But many leaders have called for the creation of a new culture of accountability in finance—one that comes from within.

The Bottom Line

Accountability can be a management buzzword, or it can be a real framework for evaluating the success or failure of an individual or an entity. The concept of corporate accountability has always meant honest and transparent financial reporting. In recent years that concept has expanded to encompass a corporation’s performance and responsiveness to environmental, social, and community issues.

What Is Activity-Based Costing (ABC)?

Activity-based costing (ABC) is a costing method that assigns overhead and indirect costs to related products and services. This accounting method of costing recognizes the relationship between costs, overhead activities, and manufactured products, assigning indirect costs to products less arbitrarily than traditional costing methods. However, some indirect costs, such as management and office staff salaries, are difficult to assign to a product.

How Activity-Based Costing (ABC) Works

Activity-based costing (ABC) is mostly used in the manufacturing industry since it enhances the reliability of cost data, hence producing nearly true costs and better classifying the costs incurred by the company during its production process.

This costing system is used in target costing, product costing, product line profitability analysis, customer profitability analysis, and service pricing. Activity-based costing is used to get a better grasp on costs, allowing companies to form a more appropriate pricing strategy. 

The formula for activity-based costing is the cost pool total divided by cost driver, which yields the cost driver rate. The cost driver rate is used in activity-based costing to calculate the amount of overhead and indirect costs related to a particular activity. 

The ABC calculation is as follows:  

1. Identify all the activities required to create the product. 
2. Divide the activities into cost pools, which includes all the individual costs related to an activity—such as manufacturing. Calculate the total overhead of each cost pool.
3. Assign each cost pool activity cost drivers, such as hours or units. 
4. Calculate the cost driver rate by dividing the total overhead in each cost pool by the total cost drivers. 
5. Divide the total overhead of each cost pool by the total cost drivers to get the cost driver rate. 
6. Multiply the cost driver rate by the number of cost drivers. 

As an activity-based costing example, consider Company ABC that has a $50,000 per year electricity bill. The number of labor hours has a direct impact on the electric bill. For the year, there were 2,500 labor hours worked, which in this example is the cost driver. Calculating the cost driver rate is done by dividing the $50,000 a year electric bill by the 2,500 hours, yielding a cost driver rate of $20. For Product XYZ, the company uses electricity for 10 hours. The overhead costs for the product are $200, or $20 times 10.

Requirements for Activity-Based Costing (ABC)

The ABC system of cost accounting is based on activities, which are any events, units of work, or tasks with a specific goal, such as setting up machines for production, designing products, distributing finished goods, or operating machines. Activities consume overhead resources and are considered cost objects.

Under the ABC system, an activity can also be considered as any transaction or event that is a cost driver. A cost driver, also known as an activity driver, is used to refer to an allocation base. Examples of cost drivers include machine setups, maintenance requests, consumed power, purchase orders, quality inspections, or production orders.

There are two categories of activity measures: transaction drivers, which involves counting how many times an activity occurs, and duration drivers, which measure how long an activity takes to complete.

Unlike traditional cost measurement systems that depend on volume count, such as machine hours and/or direct labor hours to allocate indirect or overhead costs to products, the ABC system classifies five broad levels of activity that are, to a certain extent, unrelated to how many units are produced. These levels include batch-level activity, unit-level activity, customer-level activity, organization-sustaining activity, and product-level activity.

Benefits of Activity-Based Costing (ABC)

Activity-based costing (ABC) enhances the costing process in three ways. First, it expands the number of cost pools that can be used to assemble overhead costs. Instead of accumulating all costs in one company-wide pool, it pools costs by activity. 

Second, it creates new bases for assigning overhead costs to items such that costs are allocated based on the activities that generate costs instead of on volume measures, such as machine hours or direct labor costs. 

Finally, ABC alters the nature of several indirect costs, making costs previously considered indirect—such as depreciation, utilities, or salaries—traceable to certain activities. Alternatively, ABC transfers overhead costs from high-volume products to low-volume products, raising the unit cost of low-volume products.

What Is a 10-K Wrap?

A 10-K wrap is a summary report of a company’s annual performance that bundles the 10-K report required by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) with additional commentary from the company, covering such things as the corporate vision, letter to shareholders, and business overview, among other topics.

The 10-K wrap is often released instead of a traditional annual report and generally contains fewer images and comments from management.

Understanding a 10-K Wrap

Form 10-K is a detailed annual report that is required to be submitted to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The filing provides a comprehensive summary of a company’s performance for the year. It is more detailed than the annual report that is sent to shareholders during the annual meeting to elect directors. SEC filing 10-K outlines the company’s history, equity, subsidiaries, organizational structure, audited financial statements, and other relevant information.

The most significant difference between the traditional annual report and the 10-K wrap is how the information is presented and how much additional information is included above the required 10-K information.

The traditional annual report has a greater focus on comments from the company, and the document includes more images and graphs to communicate performance, as well as a list of corporate objectives of the company.

By contrast, the 10-K wrap is essentially the 10-K filed with the SEC and some additional editorial from the company—but not nearly as much as the annual report. It usually has a lower production cost because it is often printed on lower-quality paper.

Elements of a 10-K Wrap

The basic elements of a 10-K wrap typically include a summary of the company’s financial results for the previous year and an overview of its plans for upcoming quarters, including spending and debt level forecasts.

A 10-K plan can also include an elaborate cover design, with perhaps a theme that focuses on investors and analysts involved in the company’s projects for the upcoming year.

Graphics in the 10-K wrap will usually provide a brief overview of the company’s financials, including revenue, net profit, costs, income, and any highlights from the previous year. The graphics may also outline the company’s geographical reach or other elements of growth.

Special Considerations

As the 10-K wrap has evolved, it has come to include more images and content, such as a shareholder letter and high-quality photographs. However, pictures will often be kept to a minimum.

The 10-K wrap document is usually no more than four pages long and could be even shorter, depending on what company executives want to see from the 10-K wrap report.