Features

Establishing an Effective Internal Audit Department
Hugh D. Pforsich; Bonita K. Peterson Kramer, CMA, CPA, CIA; and G. Randolph Just, CMA, CPA, CIA
The SOX Act and the New York Stock Exchange both stressed the importance of internal audit departments to prevent fraud and assess risks to a corporation's ongoing business. The installation of an IAD at a multimillion-dollar Minnesota company, The Schwan Food Co., serves to illustrate how such a department was set up and how it operates.

The Fallacy of Safe Harbors: Managing for Value in the Private Firm
Peter J. Leitner, CMA, CFM
Not knowing your firm's value is like sailing a ship without navigation equipment or a recent weather forecast. In the 21st Century global economy, private firms face a perfect storm unless they realize there are no safe harbors any more. They must operate like public companies continually valuing themselves, innovating, and growing or expect to capsize in heavy seas or in a supposed "safe harbor".

Finding the Right Mix
Kip R. Krumwiede, CMA, CPA, and Shannon L. Charles
Management accountants can and should play a decisive role in helping their firms put together the right mix of management tools and practices and getting rid of those less useful. The results of an IMA survey of almost 300 manufacturing and nonmanufacturing companies' use of 28 popular information systems, organizational practices, and management accounting practices, described here, should aid that effort.

Who's Reading Your Office E-mail? Is that Legal?
Chauncey M. DePree, Jr., and Rebecca K. Jude
Think twice before you send that e-mail witticism through your company's computer: The joke may be on you if you lose your job. According to a recent survey, 76% of employers monitor website connections, and 25% have terminated employees for e-mail misuse. Privacy rights do not rule here because courts have held employers responsible for illegal, discriminatory, or offensive communications transmitted over their system.

Three-Questions Accounting
Thomas Corbett
Throughput is the rate at which the system generates money and throughput accounting boils down to three questions, according to the author of the book Throughput Accounting. He says 3Q Accounting is a better name because it shows that managers need to answer the questions: What will be the impact on the amount of money the company generates, on the amount of money we spend to operate the company, and on the amount captured in the system?

Web Exclusive
Joseph D. Beams, CPA, and Esther A. Houser, CPA
It isn't too late to make contributions to a traditional IRA or a Roth IRA or to plan for the future. Here's a quick comparison of the two plans.

Columns

PERSPECTIVES
As time passes by...

CAREERS
Integrating project professionals into your team.

TAXES
ETIA of 2005 and home efficiency improvements.

ETHICS
Tyco: an ethical metamorphosis.

XBRL
Does XBRL cost too much?

Departments

STREETWISE
Leslie Seidman reappointed to FASB | PCAOB forums | Letters: Thank you | One more SOX roundtable | Books: SOX as opportunity; Classic investment advice update.

TOOLS OF THE TRADE
Digital handwriting, handy utilities, and smart salvage.

TECH FORUM
Paper's back.

END NOTE
21st century paper.