Closing your business for the holidays
The holidays are quickly approaching. However, leading to that point of unwinding can be stressful for many business owners, with the balancing of family demands and workplace year–end pressures. Regardless of such amounting pressures, businesses should not neglect their responsibilities to employees and clients before closing for the holidays.
Cristina Lavecchia
4 minutes read
December 21, 2016 
The hiring process: How to control risks
Recruiting and hiring new staff members is fraught with challenges. Which candidate has the right combination of skills for the job? Will she fit in with her new team members? Can he actually do the things he says he can? These questions are fundamental to effective hiring, but they don’t begin to consider the legal risks associated with the hiring process.
Adam Gorley
Internal control system: How is your accountability?
In COSO’s updated Internal Control – Integrated Framework, one of the 17 principles they present is that the organization holds individuals accountable for their internal control responsibilities in the pursuit of objectives. Have you considered how your control system enforces accountability?
Jeffrey Sherman, MBA, FCPA, FCA
New accessible buildings standards take effect in 2015
Since the passage of the Accessibility of Ontarians with Disabilities Act in 2005, Ontario has been steadily advancing its accessibility project with new and amended standards and regulations. The goal is an “accessible Ontario” by 2025, supporting all Ontarians in accessing goods, services, facilities, accommodation, employment, buildings, structures and premises. Two new regulations addressing the built environment will come into force in 2015.
Adam Gorley
Can an employee request access to their personnel and payroll files?
In Canada, employees have the right to access information in their personnel and payroll files, provided that it does not interfere with another employee’s privacy rights.
Jeffrey Sherman, MBA, FCPA, FCA
Monitoring controls: The top ten tax controls
At year end, external auditors heading into the tax department do not generally rely on internal controls to reduce testing; a great deal of effort is focused on substantively testing the income tax balances on the financial statements. Tax processes are notoriously manual in nature with numerous adjustments required to manipulate general ledger information into useable tax information. We have compiled a list of the top ten tax controls every company should have in place with the emphasis (as expected) on monitoring controls.
Occasional Contributors
Understanding enterprise architecture and related risks
Enterprise architecture is an important topic to organizations from executives, to IT/business resources, to customers, at all levels and around the globe. This blog post features input from three EA experts, from Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom.
Ron Richard