Today, even the smallest companies are quickly becoming very complicated workplaces.  As a business leader, you must cope with rising taxes, increasing regulations, growing competition, a struggling economy, increasing technological complexity, and even the mounting threat of violence and fraud in your workplace.  The consequences?  The old rules of growing a business aren’t effective and the new rules are more complex than ever.

Let’s look at the facts:

• Regulations affecting small businesses are up 36% over the past five years alone. Business owners must contend with an alphabet soup of regulations: OSHA, FMLA, FLSA, HIPAA, FCRA, ADA, ERISA, ECOA, FDCP, FCBA, IRCA, TILA, EPPA, ADEA, and so on.
• Competition is intensifying at an accelerating pace. By century’s end, America’s share of world gross domestic product declined to roughly 20% from a high of 40% at the end of World War II. Customers now demand ever-improving quality (ISO 9001), innovation, pricing, and just-in-time delivery — demands that stress smaller businesses that are already running flat out.
• As recent as ten years ago, few small businesses used accounting software or had a local area network and most certainly did not have email or a website. Today, this is common. But now, so are issues of acceptable Internet use, information security, training, or software piracy.
• One in twenty workers are physically assaulted, one in six workers are sexually harassed, and one in three workers are verbally abused in the work force, each year. Now add the events of 9/11 and there is a heightened sense of fear in business today. But, OSHA requires that all businesses with employees, large and small, provide a safe and healthy workplace.

Many agree that the business world has undergone a clear and definite paradigm shift. Now, with the wealth of opportunities that accompany a globalizing economy, there arises not only an accompanying proliferation of hazards but also an expanding universe of compliance and detail. The longer a small business lives, the greater the complexity.

And this phenomenon taxes small businesses, which are typically resource constrained, more than large ones.  In sum, for small businesses today there is much more to gain, much more to keep track of and comply with, and much more to lose, than ever before.

So, how is a business owner to keep up with all the details? Bizmanualz® Policies & Procedures provides business leaders with example procedure templates that help you:

• Comply with government regulations;
• Certify your quality to ISO 9001;
• Reduce or eliminate uncollectible receivables;
• Prevent theft or embezzlement;
• Optimize inventory;
• Reduce employee liability; and
• Prepare your business for a disaster.

Utilizing just one single concept from Bizmanualz can reduce waste, fraud, and abuse and add real money to your business’s bottom line.

Every month, business leaders share their stories with us about satisfying their auditors with new controls, of increased earnings found in their business, and how much time they saved using Bizmanualz® Policies, Procedures & Forms Manuals, all without stressing over how to write clear policies or procedures, staying late at the office to research best practices, or wondering what format to use.

There are millions of small businesses all over the world that are struggling with these issues.  If you lack the operational knowledge or are too pressed for time to focus on producing your own internal controls, you need the kind of help that Bizmanualz provides.

Bizmanualz provides the subject matter expertise gathered from a variety of sources, including books, seminars, magazine articles, and real world experience, allowing you to find a fast, easy way to reduce the complexity of running your business.  Virtually every department or topic is covered.

Bizmanualz has encapsulated the most critical and vital information into an easy-to-use set of policy and procedure templates.  Everything you need to manage your business is ready for instant download.  No other organization has the breadth and depth of content to help you quickly and easily develop a system of effective internal controls like Bizmanualz.  Download a free sample policy and procedure example to see for yourself how helpful Bizmanualz® policies, procedures, and forms can be for your business.

As an accomplished business leader, you’ll want to take advantage of this outstanding business opportunity. You’ll find a small investment in Bizmanualz® Policies & Procedures can pay tremendous dividends.

[CJA1]reports Wayne Crews, author of “10,000 Commandments: A Policymaker’s Annual Snapshot of the Federal Regulatory State” and CATO Institute scholar

We began the current decade dealing with the aftermath of the “dot-com bust”.  Looking back, it’s laughable that we thought that was as bad as things could get (see #2, #10, below).  My candidates for the most important developments taking place in, or affecting, the business world in the decade about to end are (in chronological order):

1. Wikipedia (2001)

What might have been the first free information-sharing site on the Internet was created as a ”feeder” of information to an encyclopedia project called “Nupedia”.  The feeder project quickly outdistanced its parent and today is considered an important and reliable reference.  Wikipedia contains millions of articles in hundreds of languages on a wide range of topics, which allow businesspeople to quickly gather and use knowledge on any topic.

2. Accounting Scandals (2001)

The large-scale shell game that Ken Lay and others allegedly cooked up (Mr. Lay died before he could be brought to trial) ruined the livelihoods and lives of thousands of investors, many of them employees of the company who were persuaded to hold onto their Enron stock or buy more, even as Lay and other top company officials were selling theirs.

The collapse of Enron and companies like it (e.g., WorldCom) led to the passage in the USA of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. Similar problems in Europe and elsewhere (e.g., Parmalat) led to worldwide passage of legislation mandating greater accounting and internal controls.  From that point, the practice of accounting changed enormously and — perhaps — irreversibly.

3. Google Adwords (2002)

The development of algorithms that enabled “virtual auctions” for keywords established a new kind of Internet business model, changing the way many companies advertised and redefining the sales pipeline.

4. BlackBerry (2002)

What began as a simple paging device became the first smartphone, supporting many more functions (address book, calendar, mobile phone, texting, web browsing, etc.) than just paging or voice transmission. The device’s multiple capabilities were found to be more than a little addictive, earning it the nickname “CrackBerry”.  The Blackberry’s popularity has increased as more functionality has been added.  It has spawned heavy competition in the wireless arena (see “iPhone”, below) and, of course, litigation.  (You have to expect that nowadays when you come up with a good idea.)

5. Facebook (2005)

A web app that business initially scoffed at, Facebook allows people of all backgrounds to set up or join social communities.  Naturally, businesses realized very quickly that this application provided yet another window into target markets, as well as enabled companies to use the growing number of Facebook users as another information sharing platform.

6. YouTube (2006)

YouTube even now is considered the refuge of the cheap, mindless video. That hasn’t stopped the business community from seizing the potential of this ubiquitous video source.  Companies are using “YouTube” to communicate with stakeholders and target markets — they present meetings, provide training to far-flung outposts, and test marketing concepts, among others.

7. Twitter (2006)

Another “window onto the customer’s world”, Twitter is one form of social media that a lot of companies are struggling with.  With countless media mentions, Twitter flourished in 2009, but, like with Facebook, it takes time to establish a community of followers. Most companies seem to be waiting on others to develop a viable business model for Twitter. Maybe there isn’t one.

8. Windows Vista (2007) and Windows 7 (2009)

We’re experiencing plenty of headaches with both.  How about you?  Are these “improvements” to the Windows operating system improving your environment, or are you — like me — ready to chuck it all and move to Apple or Linux?

9. iPhone (2007)

Considered the pinnacle of wireless devices even before its release, the iPhone is the one thing businesspeople absolutely cannot do without — they all love the *@&#$%! out of it —  and it’s desperately in need of a new home.

Most users I know wish Apple hadn’t struck that exclusive agreement with a carrier that shall remain nameless — they can’t wait until other carriers can offer it.

10. The Global Financial Crisis (2007 – present)

There isn’t one company — with the possible exception of bankruptcy lawyers and auctioneers — that has come through these last two years unscathed.  And the worst part?  We saw it coming and we still couldn’t get out of the way.  Greed, hubris, stupidity, naivete — call it what you want.  We all “drank the Kool-Aid.”

What would you add to this list?  Why?  What was the most important development of the last decade in your opinion?

Best wishes to everyone.  I hope we all have a much, much better 2010!

Every company should document its accounting policies and procedures.  A well-designed and properly maintained system of accounting policies and procedures documentation enhances your accountability and consistency, while at the same time producing long-term savings from reduced duplication, rework, training, and increased focus, consistency, and productivity.

The resulting accounting policy and procedure documentation serves as a training tool for your accounting staff. Communication is essential to your internal control framework, and documented accounting policies and procedures are one of the best ways to communicate essential accounting information and make sure everyone in accounting is “on the same page”.  Well-designed accounting policies and procedures documentation promotes understanding between accounting and other departments.  Well-written accounting policies and procedures enhance your accounting audit process, as well.

There are several things you have to consider when documenting and maintaining accounting policies and procedures manuals:

1. Senior Management Support
   First and foremost, management commitment is the key to getting procedures used.  Your accounting policies and procedures program requires the backing and support of senior management.  Without top management’s express support, the proper control environment won’t exist and without that, compliance — with whatever regulation or standard (Sarbanes-Oxley, 8th EU Directive, ISO 9001, etc.) — will be extremely difficult to achieve.
2. Document the Actual Accounting Process
   You have to start with the current state of the accounting process, not the ideal state. You’ll confuse your employees if you document a future state, an aspirational process, or an improvement that isn’t currently in use.  Document the current state of your processes and train new employees on those procedures.  As you implement a given process, always look for ways to improve it.  Make changes to processes as needed, update the accounting procedures accordingly, and hold a training event on the updated procedures.
3. Employee Process Owners
   Are your accounting policies and procedures driving improvement and internal control ?  They will…IF you use your employees to drive the improvement process.  Put your employees in charge of documenting “their” processes.  After all, they know their jobs and they’re naturally in the best position to improve them.  Give your employees the necessary resources, focus them on the metrics for their job, then have them document their processes and train others.
4. Availability of Policies and Procedures
   Your documented accounting policies and procedures need to be available at the point of use, where they’re an integral part of the process. If they’re in another room, or if they’re not readily accessible on the employee’s computer, they won’t be used.  Out of sight is out of mind.
5. Define Employee Responsibilities
   Even the CFO has defined responsibilities, authorities, and metrics, contained in a job description.  Do all of your accounting employees have clearly defined metrics?  Do they know what’s expected of them each and every day?  Who has the authority to approve certain transactions?  Who is responsible for safekeeping assets and controlling records?  Your job descriptions should be more specific than “collects receivables”, for an example.  They should indicate how many transactions processed per day, or how to prioritize receivables in order of collections importance.  Job descriptions should also ensure that employees understand how their functions and responsibilities are integrated with other accounting processes.
6. Clearly Stated Purpose of Accounting Policy
   What’s the difference between policies and procedures? A policy is a guiding principle used to set the direction of an organization, while a procedure is a particular way of accomplishing something.  Your accounting procedures should explain the internal controls they utilize, in order to increase employee understanding of, support for, and proper usage of those controls.  You can address all accounting policies in the introduction of the accounting manual, or address specific policies at the beginning of each accounting procedure.
7. Periodic Policies Procedures Reviews and Updates
   Are your accounting procedures effective? Scheduled process-procedure reviews, integrated with your procedure writing standards (that include the “Seven Cs” to avoid procedure writing errors and your risk assessment framework), will help you identify deficiencies you need to address.
8. Utilize a Document Control Procedure to Approve Policies and Procedures
   “Document Control” is a procedure required by ISO 9001 because traceability and an improvement baseline for document changes are critical.  What if your accounting policies and procedures aren’t changing?  The world is not static — your accounting procedures shouldn’t be, either.  Remember, your competitors’ accounting procedures are changing.
9. Organize the Accounting Manual Structure
   A sample accounting manual structure should cover exclusions, the organization of the accounting department, the applicable accounting standards (GAAP, IFRS, etc.), your accounting cycles or processes, accounting transactions and timing, documentation standards, cost accounting methodologies, and statements of ethics or company restrictions or related party-transactions.
10. Create a User-Friendly Format
    Who are you writing procedures for? Accounting users, of course — but are they novices, occasional users, or frequent users?  Different users have different needs, but all users require an easy way to navigate through your accounting policies and procedures manual, or else they will not use it.  Use a table of contents, color-coded tabs, and index numbers for departments or sections.  Provide a detailed index in the back with cross references to related subjects, regulations, or standards.  Make your accounting policies and procedures manual easy to use and your users will use it.

Top Ten Things to Consider in Accounting Policies-Procedures Documentation

1. Senior management support
2. Document the actual accounting process
3. Employee process owners
4. Available policies and procedures
5. Define employee responsibilities
6. Clearly stated purpose of accounting policy
7. Periodic policies procedures reviews and updates
8. Utilize a document control procedure to approve policies and procedures
9. Organize the accounting manual structure
10. Create a user-friendly format

In Sarbanes-Oxley compliance your SOX policies and procedures have the same purpose as with ISO 9001 policies and procedures, to provide a foundation for improvement.  Sarbanes-Oxley is not a quality standard so why the need for improvement?

First, Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX Section 302 and 404) requires that your financial reports contain accurate information from controlled accounting and financial processes.  Second, signing executives have to report on the effectiveness of the company’s internal controls and disclose any significant deficiencies in the design or operation of those internal controls that could affect the company’s financial reports.

ISO 9001 uses terms like effectiveness and deficiencies too.  Only the focus is on continuously improving effectiveness and identifying non-conformances that do not conform to planned arrangements.   Sounds pretty similar to SOX compliance.

SOX Policies and Procedures Provide a Baseline for Improvement

SOX policies and procedures are used to build consistency, communicate SOX internal controls, and provide a baseline for SOX improvement.  This is done by indentifying a target performance (policy) and communicating a series of actions (procedure) to achieve the target. Risks are areas for mistakes, fraud, or abuse.  Internal controls are responses to mitigate indentified risks to the policy and procedure. 

For example, an accounts receivable policy might be timely invoice collection.  Your procedure consists of the steps to ensure a timely invoice collection.  Risks include an accounts receivable clerk taking cash, misapplying collections, or not collecting at all.  Internal controls could include: segregation of duties, cash application controls, bad debt reserves, credit policy, credit approval process, and so on.  Each control counters one or more identified risk to the accounts receivable procedure. 

But let’s say we missed a few risks, now what?  If it is determined to be a significant deficiency then you would disclose the risks that you missed and work on improving them.  With SOX policies and procedures like this, you are Sarbanes-Oxley compliant.  You have reported on the effectiveness of your controls and disclosed known deficiencies, just like with ISO 9001.  Sarbanes-Oxley compliance and ISO 9001 conformance are pretty similar in their implementation.

Bizmanualz Accounting Policies Procedures Manuals serve as a model, or framework, for your own SOX policies and procedures.  Save time with the CFO Accounting Policies and Procedures Manuals set, which contains 239 procedures you can use to address Sarbanes-Oxley compliance with the ten accounting cycles.

As the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) of your company, you are responsible to the company’s Board of Directors for all accounting and financial matters.  You must establish company-wide objectives, policies, procedures, processes, programs, and practices to assure the company of a continuously sound financial accounting structure.

1. Cash Flow.  As a new CFO, your job is to control the cash flow position throughout the company, understand the sources and uses of cash,  and maintain the integrity of funds, securities and other valuable documents. You receive, have custody of, and disburse the company’s monies and securities. New CFO responsibility includes the authority to establish accounting policies and procedures for credit and collections, purchasing, payment of bills, and other financial obligations.  Cash is king and the flow of cash, or cash flow, is the most important job a new CFO has in any company.
2. Company Liabilities.  After cash flow, the new CFO must understand all of the company’s liabilities.  A company has many legal contracts, statutory & tax obligations, hidden liabilities in the form of contingencies, leases, or insurance summaries, and expectations from loan covenants and/or the board of directors.  As a new CFO, if you’re not watching out for the liabilities, who is?
3. Company Performance.  The new CFO must understand the company business model for generating customer value and translate the operational metrics into measures for performance.  The new CFO is the company scorekeeper using tools like the balanced scorecard, dashboards, and financial statement ratio analysis to communicate both the company’s expected and actual financial performance.
4. Department Supervision.  In a small organization, the CFO is the supervisor of Accounting, Finance, HR, and IT.  In a larger company, the CFO may only be responsible for the Accounting and Finance functions.  Either way, the new CFO supports the company’s accounting and financial functions using job descriptions, policies, and procedures, and methods for automating document control.
5. Budgeting and Expense Control.  Budgets are a fact of life, and the new CFO is responsible for overseeing the budget process, collecting the inputs, and comparing the company’s actual performance with estimates (the budget).  It is an ugly process that falls within the CFO area of control.
6. Financial Relationships.  As a new CFO, you establish and maintain lines of communication with investment bankers, financial analysts, and shareholders in conjunction with the President.  You administer banking arrangements and loan agreements and maintain adequate sources of capital for the company’s current borrowings from commercial banks and other lending institutions. In addition, you invest the company’s funds and administer incentive stock option plans.
7. Finance or Raising Capital.  You would think that finance is one of the key roles of the Chief Financial Officer.  Yes, it is important, but it comes after other more pressing operational issues, like those listed above.  The new CFO will establish and execute programs for the provision of capital required by the company, including negotiating the procurement of debt and equity capital and maintaining the required financial arrangements.  As the new CFO, you’ll coordinate the long-range plans of the company, assess the financial requirements implicit in these plans, and develop alternative ways in which financial requirements can be satisfied.
8. Financial Obligations.  As the new CFO, you need to approve all agreements concerning financial obligations, such as contracts for raw materials, IT assets, and services, and other actions requiring a commitment of financial resources.
9. Record Control.  The new CFO is responsible for the financial aspects of all company transactions including real estate bids, contracts, and leases.  The CFO also provides insurance coverage, as required, ensures the maintenance of appropriate financial records, prepares required financial reports, insures audits are completed in time and statutory book closing occur.  The CFO has primary responsibility for ensuring company compliance with financial regulations and standards, like Sarbanes-Oxley, the IRS Tax Code, and GAAP (and soon, IFRS).
10. Shareholder Relations.  A new CFO analyzes company shareholder relations policies, procedures, and information programs, including the annual and interim reports to shareholders and the Board of Directors, as well as recommends to the President new or revised policies, procedures, or programs when needed.

The Top Ten Responsibilities for the New CFO:

1. Cash Flow
2. Company Liabilities
3. Company Performance
4. Department Supervision
5. Budgeting and Expense Control
6. Financial Relationships
7. Finance or Raising Capital
8. Financial Obligations
9. Record Control
10. Shareholder Relations

As a new CFO, sample accounting policies and procedures are be helpful to serve as a model, or framework, for your own accounting policies and procedures.  Save time.  The CFO Accounting Policies and Procedures Manuals set contains 239 procedures you can use to address the ten accounting cycles within your responsibility.  And now, Bizmanualz NEW OnPolicy software application can help you automate your document control process to easily maintain your conformance to critical compliance standards like Sarbanes-Oxley, ISO, ITIL, CoBit, FDA, or JCAHO.  Sign up for a free software trial today.

More than one son or daughter of a company founder has been coaxed into the family business in the years before dad’s retirement. Dad wants to back away from the business. “Planning for a graceful exit”, he says. “And”, he continues, “You are the heir to the company business.” Dad says that he realizes that it will take some time to transition out and transition you in.

From your corporate experience, you will bring new ideas to the family business like concepts about intellectual property and compliance. In the corporate world, key inventions, know-how, customer lists, and the like are documented, managed within information systems, and counted as assets.

Similarly, those corporations mitigated risk through auditing to compliance standards and then sustaining compliance through development of clearly written procedure manuals. Documentation was coupled with staff training which reinforced comliance with the procedures. At the corporation, decisions were arrived at in working groups, with key functions in the company agreeing on how they would support a change. New technology? Has Engineering approved the design? Has Legal protected the intellectual property? Has Marketing positioned the change in the marketplace. Has Sales introduced the concept to key customers and provided them with a beta product to evaluate? Eventually, change was adopted and enforced by the chain of command.

Arriving at the family business, you may find a troubling lack of documentation of core know-how, and a lack of internal controls and cross-checks you were accustomed to in a public company, at least since passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) law. But when you bring up lax controls with your father, he may shrug it off. You start to realize that he is the center of everything at the company. The company was built on his great invention and know-how. He personally manages all the key accounts. He watches over the books and bank balances.  He is the company’s knowledge management system. When he does delegate, it is usually to loyal, trusted staff, whom also are approaching retirement. It begins to dawn on you that your presence may be the first tangible sign of “succession planning” within the family business.

You begin to realize that the company is designed around your father. Separating the business knowledge from your father will be something like surgery. Is he even sincere about backing off? And if he is, you’re not sure that filling his central role is what’s best for the future of the company.

So you’re left with this realization: How do you capture the business processes, policies, and procedures from your father. And how do you do so without draining the personality out of the business?

Sell Progress as a Retirement Plan for Dad

So if you’re that son or daughter stepping into the family business, you probably realize by now that if you want the business to grow profitably and continue as a leader in its markets after dad leaves, he can’t remain the personification of all company know-how, relationships and control. He has to gradually entrust the essence of his company to your efforts to document policies, procedures, systems and controls. And your job, as it’s shaping up, is like a cruise director that can organize all the right get-togethers, but can’t make anyone come to them.

Deep down, you know this. Trying to fill your dad’s shoes is not the way to go. And you couldn’t do it anyway, because you’re not your dad and not one of the employees would pretend that you were.

But first things first. You sense that your first customer for this change is your dad and other family currently with hands-on control of the closely held business. You’re going to have to sell it to them on the idea of replacing personalities with process.

So, how do you sell something to your father that he never embraced? And why would employees accept any policy or process so long as your dad is still there at the center of everything? They can always just ask him, right?

There is no easy answer to this. Clearly it’s a journey of small steps for everyone. Your job will be twofold: helping employees develop and adopt policies, processes and controls that will govern their work lives; and coaxing your dad to encourage decisions to be made by consulting policies instead of him. Work with employees to develop policies and controls and they will support them. Then work with your dad to accept policies, procedures and controls as codification of his way of doing things that have made the company successful.

This is the hard work of business succession planning. You face the task of transplanting your dad’s way of doing things into the people and processes of the company. Bit by bit, the man can be separated from the company, and the company will continue to function successfully.

What Business Buyers Are Looking For

Buyers will look to see if the founder is separable from the business. Replacing the key man with policies, procedures and systems transforms the company in the eyes of potential buyers into an asset that can sustain and grow without the founder. Will sales dry up or key know-how vanish when the founder clears out of the corner office? If they will, the company can’t compete in the buyer’s mind with other buying opportunities where the intangible assets of the company have been corporatized into the documentation, policies, procedures and systems of a company.

How will buyers know? In their due diligence, buyers will look to see if the company has up-to-date procedure manuals. They will look at HR and accounting compliance and evaluate the company’s vulnerability to legal trouble should allegations of harassment, fraud or abuse arise. What is the risk that management attention and capital will be tied up in law suits, allowing competitors to pull ahead? Buyers will talk to employees and observe how decisions are made. They will observe the operation and size up the viability of the company without the founder.

Your Leadership Style Should Build on Your Strengths

If our Baby-Boomer parents counted on hard work to get ahead, we Millennials have learned that they also have to work smarter. They have learned that they don’t have to make all the decisions. Millenials built careers on the leverage of teams, systems and controls, and relied less on a personal hard-driving style like their parents did. As the next in line, your leadership style nurtures continuous improvement: You expect those closest to the work to make decisions and act on them. You have more patience for mistakes than inaction or constant checking-in with the boss. Examine your leadership style, and how you lead differently than your dad. Work to your strengths.

The Management Layer - a Mirror for Dad’s Management Style

Of course leading a transition will take some time. Will you have enough? As if you were a buyer sizing up the compnay, you should also size up the risk of challenge.

One indicator of how serious dad is about ceding management of the company, is the approach taken by his management staff in place today. They have had many years to develop patterns of work and action in response to your dad’s leadership style. Is the management independent-minded? Are they making real decisions, and acting on them? Or do they complain and shrug their shoulders about what they would like to do, but cite dad’s lack of support. Do they get in line with dad as quickly as possible?

Is the management staff fundamentally weak and simply implementing whatever dad wants, or is the management commitment there for it to work? Are they proactive and focused on meaningful change? Does every decision have to go through dad, or are there policies and procedures in place to govern decision making? In short, do managers manage or do they react to dad?

So above, in broad terms, we have laid out the challenge — can you perform the transplant surgery without cutting out the heart of the business? But we have not gotten into specifics about what you do in HR, what you do in accounting, in procurement, sales, marketing, etc. Describing development of policies and procedures in each function of the business will be addressed in a series of future articles, one per function.

Jerry Sweas contributed to this article jerry.sweas@comcast.net.

Is President Obama’s plan to increase regulation on the markets?  His new chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Mary Schapiro, indicated its time for small public companies to comply with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act.

The original intent of the Sarbanes-Oxley legislation was for all public companies to comply with the requirements for internal controls over financial reporting.  Companies with less than $75 million in market value were supposed to comply.    

Under the Bush administration, the former SEC chairman Christopher Cox had granted a series of one-year exemptions for small business. Many small businesses complained that it would be too costly for them to comply.

The new SEC chairman said internal controls guarantee “accurate, robust and easy-to-understand financial reporting,” and that “It’s time that we bring uniformity to the system so that investors know what to expect from companies.”

If there is one thing we know about regulations, they always increase and rarely ever decrease.  One just has to accept the fact that regulations are ever increasing.