The Big Four audit firms — Deloitte, Ernst & Young, Price­wa­ter­house­C­oopers, and KPMG — along with the number five and six firms — BDO and Grant Thornton — have joined forces to call for signif­icant changes to the way public companies report their results.

They propose businesses report realtime financial data via the Internet, rather than quarterlies. It’s obvious that this would provide more timely infor­mation for investors, and that’s a good thing. It also seems like this could at least take advantage of the costly effects of Sarbox, that of thoroughly documenting controls — because the controls would be even more critical if infor­mation is constantly updated and available.

Either way it’s nice to know the guys at the top are still thinking about ways to improve the industry. Taking advantage of technology, especially the web-based variety, will continue to grow in impor­tance not just for auditors and accoun­tants, but in every aspect of business. Some accountant bloggers have been quite hysterical about the lack of focus on our part on technology.

Now if I can slide off on a tangent, I’d like to draw your attention to the headline (from the link above): “Accounting firms want company accounts revamp, paper says.” First of all, is this even a sentence? Is revamp a noun now? I had to read that thing several times over to really get what they were trying to say.