In just under a month – June 15, to be exact – another 1,200-some public companies will submit interactive, or XBRL-tagged, financial statements to the SEC. They follow the companies that made the jump a year ago, which were those with a worldwide public equity float of at least $5 billion. This year, “all other domestic and foreign large accelerated filers using U.S. GAAP will be subject to the same interactive reporting requirement,” according to the SEC. Then, a year from now, smaller reporting companies and foreign private issuers that prepare their financial statements according to IFRS will follow.

XBRL, or eXtensible Business Reporting Language, is a means of tagging data so that it can be manipulated and moved, yet still be readily identified. Say a company’s sales for the quarter were $5 million. That number is tagged so that no matter how the financial statements are sliced and diced, it’s clear that this particular $5 million figure refers to quarterly sales. more

If you work through a broker when you’re buying insurance for your firm, you probably know that he or she earns a commission when you finally sign up for a policy. Most are based on the overall value of the premiums you pay and compensate the broker for the work of hunting for the policy that best fits your firm’s needs.

However, some brokers also receive “contingent commissions” or “contingent fees,” as I wrote in August. As their name suggests, these charges are contingent upon some outside event occurring, rather than on the sale itself. For instance, a contingent commission may come into play if a broker places more business with a particular insurer. more

While it’s been nearly 9 years since Enron Corporation filed for bankruptcy, the former energy giant’s financial shenanigans still are reverberating. Specifically, financial regulators and standards-setters are continuing their efforts to move off-balance-sheet partnerships and arrangements onto companies’ financial statements. Enron, if you recall, had several thousand off-balance-sheet affiliates with a cumulative $40 billion in debt, according to this report by The Financial Times.

One result of the desire for greater transparency: the proposed changes in lease accounting standards expected to be issued by the FASB in June, which will require all leases to appear on companies’ financial statements. “The movement to put all obligations on the balance sheet is a sign of the tail end of the Enron era,” says Mindy Berman, managing director with real estate firm Jones Lang LaSalle, Chicago.

Why should treasurers care about what is basically an accounting change? The potential impact to companies’ P&L and balance-sheet statements could hinder some firms’ ability to comply with loan covenants. more

One of the biggest hassles for corporate treasurers is the paper-shuffling required to open, close, or otherwise change bank accounts. “This is a huge pain point,” says Stacey Rosenthall, senior business manager for payments and corporate strategy with SWIFT Americas. In fact, about half of companies have four or more employees focused on bank account management, SWIFT research shows. Opening an account takes more than 2 weeks at about one-third of firms. SWIFT is the acronym for Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, a cooperative that facilitates the exchange of millions of standardized financial messages daily.

Fortunately, some relief is in sight. In March, SWIFT, working with corporate finance departments, IT vendors, and banks went live with EBAM, or electronic bank account management. With this, one of the remaining manual treasury processes is undergoing automation. more

Interest rate and credit risk are most common; agricultural commodity and market risk most significant.

If the economic upheaval of the past year and a half has taught us anything, it’s that risk isn’t something to be taken lightly. A survey of more than 200 corporate finance execs conducted by AFP in November 2009 shows which financial risks are most common across many organizations, as well as those that are most significant. Interestingly, some risks that were relatively less common nonetheless could have a significant impact on those organizations that had to deal with them. The survey also delved into the tools organizations are using to manage financial risks.

Interest rate risk was the most common, with more than four in five respondents reporting some exposure to it. Not surprising when you consider that commercial paper rates for nonfinancial companies have fallen from about 5 percent in early 2007 to near zero today.

On the other hand, while almost all companies have to manage this risk, only 11 percent of respondents said that it could have a significant impact on their organization’s profitability. In fact, for 38 percent of respondents, the potential impact was either not significant or was only minimally significant. Nearly three-quarters of respondents use over-the-counter swaps to handle interest rate risk. more