F.H. Black & Company

GAAP, PSAB, IFRS....regardless of the standard, financial reporting is becoming more onerous for municipalities. Tight deadlines, reduced staffing levels and increasing demand to be fully accountable and transparent all make the job of finance professionals more difficult.

With this in mind, Canadian municipalities are asking, "How can we trim hours off our year/quarter end preparation time, while significantly reducing the risk of fraud and error?" For many, CaseWare Working Papers has become the answer.

For a better understanding of CaseWare's benefits for municipalities, please join us for one of our upcoming webinars. During these 90 minute presentations, we demonstrate how CaseWare simplifies the generation of  financial statements and the audit binder, reduces the risk of errors and can ultimately lead to reduced audit fees.

Click here to register for upcoming dates.

We work with food processors every day to implement technology to improve their food safety & quality systems. These processors understand that food safety and quality are key to their long term success. The 2010 Food Safety Survey confirms this:

• 90% of consumers believe food related recalls are on the rise or the same as 2008
• 65% of consumers are concerned about the quality of the food they eat

If 90% of your customer's customers care about something, you should too!

To access the 2010 survey, go here: http://www.deloitte.com/us/foodsafety

If you are a food processor, food safety is critical to your business. Consider:

• 83 per cent of consumers can name a product that was recalled in the last two years because of safety concerns;*
• 57 per cent of consumers have stopped eating, either temporarily or permanently, a particular food because of a recall; and*
• 76 per cent of consumers report they are more concerned today than they were five years ago about the food they eat.*

*Research from AMR and a Deloitte survey

The result of this consumer focus on food safety is; Food Safety has become VERY important to retailers (your customers). You may already be required to submit your food safety system to external audit to do business with big retailers. If not, be aware - it is coming.

And don't forget about government:

• Government initiated food safety advertising is increasing. You can hardly turn on the radio without hearing about www.healthycanadians.gc.ca where the top story is.... food safety.
• The 2010 throne speech mentioned improving food safety as a government priority (http://www.speech.gc.ca/eng/media.asp?id=1388).

It is so important to government in fact, they will help fund implementation of food safety systems (HACCP/GMP). Under the Growing Forward Initiative, the Federal and Provincial governments provide funding to "support the development of a profitable, innovative agri-food sector that is adept at managing risk and responsive to market demands." A major component of Growing Forward funding is focused on food safety.

So your customers want it. Government wants it and believes so strongly that it is essential to a profitable agri-food sector that they will help you pay for it. The question then is why are more food processors not focusing on improving their food safety systems?

"Because it is bloody expensive" might be your answer. And you are right. There is a lot of time, energy and expense involved in these systems and given our economic climate, cost cutting is a manager's duty. But this leads to dangerous choices.

As Dr. Ron Wasik points out in his recent article in Food in Canada (http://tinyurl.com/foodarticle), walking the line between prudent cost savings and reducing food safety is very tricky.

There are a number of ways to reduce the cost of your food safety systems. If done properly, these cost cutting measures can actually increase your operations food safety, not diminish it! To learn more, attend our upcoming breakfast seminar with the Manitoba Food Processors Association. For more details, or to register, click here.

Finance professionals usually view spreadsheets as THE answer to many of their day-to-day problems. What they often don't realize is just how dangerous this can be.

During the course of many of our consulting engagements, we work with clients to help them understand this risk and ultimately to mitigate it.

The client may initially comment "I don't believe that these errors occur as frequently as you say". Or "Surely if the mistake was significant, someone would catch it". So periodically we need to prove our point. This is often done via a careful review of a couple of their spreadsheets. The shock can be considerable.

So for those of you that may have similar doubts, here is a 1.7 million dollar example of just how risky and damaging reliance on spreadsheets can be: http://www.postalnewsblog.com/2010/03/17/baltimore-district-overpaid-grievance-settlement-by-1-7-million/ .

To better understand WHY these mistakes are so prevalent, click here to go to an article we have published on it.