With headline-grabbing names like Arm and Instacart going public, and Klaviyo likely to follow, analysts are discussing whether IPOs are making a comeback. But companies eyeing IPOs should proceed with caution to avoid accounting misstatements.

Accounting errors and restatements surged 150% during the 2023 proxy season, according to analysis by Glass Lewis. Much of the increase is due to the IPO and SPAC boom in 2020–2021, the advisory firm surmised, as newer companies are often still in the process of developing internal controls.

Internal controls may not be the juiciest topic, but good controls are vital to ensuring a business remains a going concern, Rich Brady, global director at the Institute of Management Accountants (IMA) and CEO of the American Society of Military Comptrollers, told CFO Brew. He spoke with us about how CFOs can balance innovative, fast-driving cultures with the need for strong internal controls.

What are some reasons for the restatements or errors that newer companies experience?

A lot of the relevant accounting standards that [the SPACs] were relying on were complex and required a fair amount of judgment and the use of estimates, and anytime you introduce judgments and estimates into the accounting standards, [disclosures] can be prone to interpretation error.

Click here for more on preventing accounting errors.—CV

Interest rates are rising—along with economic anxieties. Finance leaders are faced with the task of protecting cash flow while preparing to move fast if the market changes. No pressure, right?

Economic recovery will come in time. Luckily, you can make strategic moves now to help position yourself best for those brighter days. Oracle NetSuite’s 17 Growth Levers CFOs Can Pull Now is a crash course in everything you need to hit the ground running when things start looking up again.

Dig into 17 ways to give your strategy a boost, straight from the pros at Oracle NetSuite. Tips include:

• implementing rolling forecasts
• tapping into alternative sales channels
• doubling down partnerships and collaborations
• focusing FP&A on the future

Check out the full guide and get prepped.

Fall is here, but that doesn’t mean you should just let yourself drift into a pumpkin spice daze. There’s still work to be done. To help you keep on top of your task list, even if the 🎃 spice is calling your name, we’ve rounded up how-to guides for working with marketing, the skills accountants need to become CFO, and measuring your FP&A maturity.

Our usual disclaimer to the wise: You should always look for additional resources and expertise when doing complicated finance work, because it can be very difficult to accurately sum up sophisticated concepts.

With that said, take a look at these useful finance cheat sheets CFO Brew found on LinkedIn this month.

• Wassia Kamon’s “5 ways finance and marketing teams can work together better”: It might seem like finance and marketing teams don’t have a lot in common. As Kamon, VP of finance and corporate controller at the Low Income Investment Fund, describes it, sales and marketing “sell the sizzle, not the steak,” while finance is “trained to…stick to the facts.”

To see more finance and accounting cheat sheets, click here.—DA

Having your company go broke isn’t always a bad thing for some executives. Case in point: Trucking company Yellow paid out more than $4.6 million in retention bonuses to 10 executives in the weeks leading up to its declaration of bankruptcy this month, according to a court filing by the firm. The bonuses were criticized by the Teamsters Union, which noted that the bonuses came in the same period when Yellow missed a $50 million payment for employee benefits.

These kinds of bonuses during a bankruptcy can be risky. Payments made by a company in the period before filing bankruptcy come under special scrutiny, Howard Magaliff, a bankruptcy attorney at R3M Law, told CFO Brew. Financial professionals involved in a bankruptcy need to justify expenses going back multiple years before they file, and pay particular attention to some of those transactions, Magaliff said.

“If you’re looking ahead to the possibility of filing a bankruptcy, you should be aware, and counsel that’s advising the company should be telling the board that certain things are going to be scrutinized,” Magaliff said. “Certain actions that, when you’re not contemplating a bankruptcy are perfectly OK and perfectly legitimate, take on a different character [amid a bankruptcy proceeding].”

Continue reading.—SW

Today’s top finance reads.

Stat: Nine. That’s how many stores Target said it’s closing because “theft and organized retail crime” were threatening worker safety. The closures include locations in Portland, Seattle, San Francisco, and New York City. (CNBC)

Quote: “Amazon is now exploiting its monopoly power to enrich itself while raising prices and degrading service for the tens of millions of American families who shop on its platform and the hundreds of thousands of businesses that rely on Amazon to reach them.”—FTC chair Lina Khan in a statement announcing an antitrust lawsuit against the online giant. Seventeen states also joined the lawsuit. (the Wall Street Journal)

Read: Communicating financial data to non-finance stakeholders takes practice and skill. (Forbes)

Growth plan: Even in a rocky market, you can protect cash flow while planning for future growth. Oracle NetSuite’s guide explores 17 growth levers you can pull now to boost your strategy. Get it here.*

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