My busy season has begun in earnest

Busy season is upon me and I’m up to my eyeballs in work. It’s Friday night but I’m relaxing at home, trying to chill out and prepare for a full day at the office tomorrow. Got out early tonight, at a mere 6:30pm!

Needless to say it’s affecting my blogging frequency. And hearing about lunch time outdoors ice skating at Nathan Phillips Square isn’t helping dull the roar of airplanes as they land a kilometre away. I’ve spent the past week at an office pretty much at the beginning of the the landing strip at Canada’s busiest airport.

One of the things I’ve learned since beginning this blog nearly 1 year ago is that everyone has busy season at a different time. I just assumed it was January through April for everyone! I figured, many companies have calendar year ends, hence audit season heats up, and income taxes are due in Canada by April 30 (and US taxes due by the 15th that month), so tax season compounds the frenzy.

Anyway, the schedule is booked solid for me through the end of May, but come June I’ll be jetting off somewhere hot and beachy. Until that week (or two), I’ll keep my head down and power through. (Props if you know where that phrase is from.)

Study shows how hard it is to cancel accounts

Tom Spring of PC World conducted an unscientific study into how difficult it is to cancel subscription services purchased over the internet, and the results are in. It’s not easily done.

To evaluate how difficult canceling an online service can be, I signed up for and then canceled 32 accounts, each at a different site. About a third of the services in my sample made the seemingly simple goal of canceling very hard to achieve.

I’ve always been wary of free trials and the like, because I had a sneaking suspicion that it wouldn’t be as easy to get out as they made it out to be. This study just confirms those suspicions.

Why do companies do this to their customers? How much damage are they doing to their brand with these shenanigans? Is it worth keeping someone on against their wishes?

An alternative view of Khodorkovsky and Yukos

At least one person is defending Putin’s actions against Yukos and its former president, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, but it was this that caught my eye (emphasis mine):

Russian oligarchs were taking control of the entire Russian economy. These people had a strangle hold on every aspect of Russia and were basically out of reach of the government. … Russia’s key industries and natural resources were being used to secure massive personal wealth for a few, and for many years the ones suffering were the people. Now I am a free market conservative, but I also understand there must be limits on how much power can be horded into unelected hands.

[…]

I have no doubt this is a sugar coated version of events that deliberately overlooks much of the crimes this man may have committed. The richest man in Russia running for President? Do we want Bill Gates for President? He controls a major chunk of our economy already – would we trust him as he oversaw a justice department that is charged with enforcing corporate monopoly laws? Where is the representative of the people?

Which reminded me of a recent post by Dilbert creator Scott Adams, where he makes the argument that Bill Gates would be a great president:

For my president I want a mixture of Mother Teresa, Carl Sagan, Warren Buffet, and Darth Vader. Bill has all of their good stuff. His foundation will save more lives than Mother Teresa ever did. He’s got the Carl Sagan intelligence and rational mind. He’s a hugely successful businessman. And I have every reason to believe he can choke people just by concentrating in their general direction. You can’t tell me that wouldn’t be useful at a summit.

He’s got a point doesn’t he?

Mar. 1, 2022 Edit: OK, so I regret this one now.

PricewaterhouseCoopers accused of ‘false’ auditing for Yukos

The Russian tax authority has accused PricewaterhouseCoopers of providing “false audits” to the former oil giant Yukos. I’m sure we’ll find out sooner or later whether these accusations have any merit, but for the time being any government institution in Russia is most definitely not getting the benefit of my doubt.

Putin and his regime are so corrupt it would really surprise me if PwC was actually responsible for any wrongdoing. The downfall of Yukos was suspect in the first place, and right now the former CEO is rotting in Siberia for tax evasion. This is just more of the same. I suppose Khodorkovsky should just be happy he wasn’t poisoned like Yuschenko and that spy who died a few weeks ago.

The accountancy group says that it produced, in line with audit standards, two reports – one for stockholders and also recommendations for management – on the results of one audit. However, it insisted that this was in line with regular practice. It said that it would “vigorously defend” its position in court.

To me that sounds like they provided the audit report and a management letter. The management letter is what we give all our audit and review clients at the end that basically highlights anything they should know about our findings, for instance possible control weaknesses, and other management advice, that wouldn’t go into an audit report.

Audit reports are quite static documents in general. They all look the same and say the same thing, and that’s the way it has to be to maintain some quality control over the profession. But if you want to provide some useful information to the client, you have to do it elsewhere. This seems to be what was done.

In a way it’s nice to know some things never change, but in another more accurate way, I wish Russians could enjoy a sustained competent democratic government.

AccMan gets a fresh coat of paint

One of the premier accountant blogs on the web has gone through a complete redesign and looks fantastic. Dennis Howlett’s AccMan is, according to the tagline, about “innovation for professional accountants,” and the design reflects this innovation focus very well.

The theme is modeled after the blog of Bartleme Design, which is one of my personal favourite design blogs. The theme is called Fresh and appears to have the blessing of Bartleme, so that’s great. I only wish I’d found the theme before AccMan did!

Lately I’ve been thinking about changing themes for this blog, but I’ll probably stick with what I’ve got. Change for the sake of change is never a good thing, and the current design is working well for me at the moment. WordPress just makes it so easy to change the entire look and feel of your blog with the click of the mouse.

Anyway, check out AccMan, he updates mega-frequently.