ACC 557 Week 1 DQ1
"Improper or Illegal Methods” Please respond to the following:
From the e-Activity, identify the company, the accounting impropriety or illegality, how it was detected, the outcome, and propose a strategy that might have prevented the situation. Indicate how the strategy should be implemented.
Assess the impact to the company’s financial performance based on the impropriety and the resulting effect to stakeholder confidence in management, recommending how the company can minimize the resulting impact to the business.
The name of the company is Beazer Homes USA. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) found them guilty of “ manipulating its earnings by hiding money in certain accounts” (Caulfield, 2008). The SEC found discrepancies in its quarterly and annual earnings on statements from 2000 to 2007. The company created reserves for land inventory and construction costs that resulted in the company being able to manipulate earnings that they were to report to the shareholders. They fraudulently misstated their net income. The SEC found them guilty. Beazer never acknowledged their guilt. However, the company cooperated with the investigation; implemented new controls over its practices from the accounting standpoint to ensure it does not happen again; and they also filed adjusted financial statements for 1998 through the second quarter of 2007 to properly identify the company’s earnings and losses. I would propose that they should implement internal quality control checks of the books as well as hire external auditors to verify the financial statements. This would ensure that there are not only internal eyes on the documents but also
