Re: [SL] GAAP and fixed asset

[Joseph A. M. <ja...@jo...>]

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Hi Enzo,

I am not sure what you mean by GAAP certification.  In the U.S.  we  use
different standards then  international standards.  Although they are
converging.  The IAASB may use terms I am not familiar.

Are you talking about an auditors report that your financial statements
are in accordance with GAAP? In the U.S. CPAs offer an opinion not a
certification (which implies a guarantee or a high level of assurance
then we provide) - this opinion states whether our financial statements
are fairly stated in accordance with generally accepted accounting
principles.
I assume your accountant needs to take your financial statement and
present them in a uniform format with the audit report, i.e. footnote,
fonts, title, page number, etc.  This is common for presentation purposes.

You can help your accountant reduce his time and therefore his fees if
you can present the financial statement in a spreadsheet so that he
would not have to manually re-enter the information. Lastly, you would
need to make sure that your G/L account titles are similar to what they
use in the financial statements. You should strive to mimic his report.
Talk to your accountant get his suggestions for changes. If your books
are not in order because you don't know bookkeeping then you should hire
a bookkeeper.

If your question is really - what is GAAP and how do I comply with it -
it would be more difficult to teach you. But as the Chairman I would not
suggest that you learn GAAP and bookkeeping. You should hire someone
familiar. I.e. GAAP requires you to capitalize certain assets that have
a useful life greater then one year. If you bought furniture you would
have to depreciate it over its useful life. You would have an asset
account with an accompanying contra asset account that accumulates
depreciation. As you can see it gets involved. In the U.S. GAAP is free.
You can get GAAP from the body that generates it from their website.
www. fasb.org ( this won't really help you as you don't know the
fundamentals) and  the  most countries have  joined an international
standard setting body  called  IFAC. Each country has joined and the
GAAP and audit standards would be covered by them. Good luck.

With respect to fixed assets, Sql doesn't have a subledger for fixed
assets that can maintain details about each piece of equipment,
machinery or furniture. Perhaps you can request it as a future project.

If I am totally off mark with your GAAP certification question- please
educate me.

Joe

www.joemaffia.com



Vincenzo Puliatti wrote:
> Good morning,
>
> My name is Enzo Puliatti. I am the Chairman of IT Synergy (
www.itsyn.com ). We have an ongoing project aimed to spread the usage of
SQL-Ledger for SMEs in Egypt and we are working on many localization and
customization issues. However, we have recently faced a bureaucratic
> issue and we are trying to find out if there is any experience on GAAP
certification for SQL-Ledger or at least a clear "how-to do". Have you
done anything in this sense in your  country or are you aware of any
successful or ongoing effort in this senses?
>
> I do understand that this may be different from country to country but
we would like to start from some established experience. If nobody has
collected these procedure we are most willing to collect all information
and share it with all you.
>
> For those of you that (like me) are not to familiar with accounting
procedures and rules, the  idea is to be able to completely replace
manual bookkeeping (or "hybrid") with a fully computerized one using
SQL-Ledger. I personally don't like the idea of using SL in my company
and then having the accountant manually copying the information in a
different format to present it to the relevant authorities.
>
> A second issue is related to management of fixed assets. I have seen
several scattered posting about this issue without a clearly defined
procedures. This topic is also not mentioned in the manual and other
documentation that I have found online.
>
> The basic question is: how to treat the purchasing, inventorying and
depreciation of fixed assets and other consumable that are meant to be
used for the company itself and not for resale?
>
> Thanks and regards,
> Enzo Puliatti
>
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