Digital Financial Reporting

I got a Burroughs adding machine for Christmas. Mine is serial number 3-347317 which means it was probably made between May 1916 and Feburary 1917.  Per the video Classiest adding machine ever (1922) this is the "machine that built capitalism".  Burroughs had an entire line of "figuring", "bookkeeping" and "adding" machines.

This adding machine still works which is very cool.

The podcast How to Modernize Accounting (XBRL, Knowledge Systems, Immutable Distributed Ledgers) will help you get your head around the big changes that are happening to accounting, reporting, auditing, and analysis.

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If you want to understand where accounting, reporting, auditing, and analysis is going it helps to understand where it has been.  Watch this video about the Burroughs adding machine. Read about its history. (Burroughs Corportation)

The New Map of Life is a report published by The Stanford Center on Longevity of Stanford University.  The findings of the report is this:

In the United States, as many as half of today’s 5-year-olds can expect to live to the age of 100, and this once unattainable milestone may become the norm for newborns by 2050. Yet, the social institutions, norms and policies that await these future centenarians evolved when lives were only half as long and need updating.

Basically, what is happening is that lives are getting longer but the only change is that we are tacking those additional years to the end of life and not adjusting any other phases of our lives.

Read the report and watch this short video, it will change your perspective.  This is about living higher quality lives.

Seems like the AICPA and the NASBA are evolving the CPA and instituting new licensing model for CPAs beginning in 2024.  Seems like they are trying take a strategy of adapting and evolving the CPA rather than disrupting it.

This begs a lot of questions.  Will this change be enough?  Is this a knee-jerk reaction?  Why would it be the case that getting feedback from 3,000 current stakeholders be the right path?

I recommend the book The Great Upheaval. While that book focuses changes within higher education, the fundamental change impacting all of us is the same: the rapid shift from an analog industrial economy to a digital knowledge economy. 

Folks, this is be biggest change in accounting, reporting, auditing, and analysis in 500 years!

No one knows exactly what will happen, not even myself.  No one can predict the future perfectly.  My personal prediction is pretty much summarized in Computational Professional Services.

My advice to you would be to take in as much information as possible and be very careful who you listen to.  We are truly in the midst of a great upheaval.  While there are many threats, there are also many opportunities.

In this podcast Technology and the Future of Audits, Wes Bricker of PWC and who is currently the chairman discusses XBRL, auditing XBRL-based information, quality of XBRL-based reports, and many other interesting topics.  This is definitely worth listening to.

In particulary listen to minutes 20 to 32 when the audit of XBRL-based reports and report quality is discussed.

Wes Bricker is also author of Why XBRL is the Future of ESG Reporting.