CW Associates CPA by Jasmine Gail

CW Associates, CPAs: Accounting and tax services you can count on!

jasminegail — 2015-11-28 02:23:18 UTC

CW Associates, CPAs, is a local firm that provides first-rate accounting, tax, and general business consulting services to businesses and their owners, and nonprofit entities in various industries. Reviews indicate that its services are on the same level as most big firms in the nation.

In last year’s Pacific News “Book of Lists”, CW Associates is placed as the 9th largest CPA firm in Hawaii since its professional staff is composed of 30 accountants with six partners.

You can be sure that their professional staff is highly qualified to do the job for you because many of them have an extensive experience working in an international accounting firm.

All of CW Associates partners and staff are licensed certified public accountants (CPAs) with master’s degree in business administration or accounting. Their hands-on approach and low partner-to-staff ratio guarantee you that you will have direct contact with knowledgeable CPAs.

Reviews also claim that CW Associates is unique among local practitioners because it has communication, specialization, and a breadth, depth and diversity of experience. Clients could receive their information, and current and practical responses to their questions on time with CW Associates’ approach of adding the expertise of a qualified local CPA firm to their available resources. The partners of the firm are also actively involved in the services they provide. Its current clients include several well-known enterprises and nonprofit organizations in Hawaii, including their employee benefit plans.

If you need a top-notch service and professional service, CW Associates is the best choice for your concern. Your decision to choose the firm helps you to balance the reasonable fees and attentive service you desire.

CW Associates’ staff has been serving different enterprises and nonprofit organizations for more than 30 years throughout Hawaii and in the Pacific Islands. It still upholds its purpose of being a significant professional resource for you and your management team.

In order to resolve financial reporting and tax issues that arise during the year, CW Associates seek constant contact to encourage questions from their clients, instead of waiting until after the end of the year. Their professionals are always committed to provide you the best assurance services.

CW Associates’ largest clients are major players in manufacturing, real estate, retail, and wholesale in Hawaii. They also provide services to associations, automobile dealerships, franchisees, hospitality, private and charter schools, and restaurants, and other commercial ventures. Their current good reputation in Hawaii is the result of their extensive experience and excellent services to businesses in particular industries, such as construction contractors, nonprofit organizations and governmental entities, healthcare, and employee benefit plans.

One of the substantial parts of their professional practice is the accounting, auditing, tax, and general business consulting services to the construction industry. Its staff is trained every year in the unique accounting, reporting, and tax consequences of construction contracts. CW Associates’ partners are actively involved in the General Contractors Association of Hawaii, the Hawaii Chapter of the Construction Financial Management Association (CFMA), and the Associated Builders and Contractors – Honolulu Chapter (ABC).

The other substantial part of their professional practice is the accounting, auditing, tax, and general business consulting services to nonprofit organizations and governmental entities. Each of CW Associates’ professional staff is trained every year on the Yellow Book and OMB A-133 accounting, auditing, reporting, and compliance requirements. Their services to their nonprofit clients include addressing pension plan termination, analysis of split-interest agreements and joint activity (fundraising) costs, applications for exempt status, clarification of allowable and unallowable costs for federally funded programs, post-retirement benefits and other accounting issues, preparation of indirect cost allocation plans, and timely updates for new Internal Revenue Service (IRS) reporting requirements.

One of the growing parts of their professional practice with the addition of Terri Fujii as an adult partner is the accounting, auditing, tax, and consulting services to healthcare organizations. CW Associates provides services to community health clinics, medical and dental groups, and providers of long term care services. Its services to their healthcare clients include preparing the Form 990, preparing cost reports, financial analysis, and assistance with regulatory compliance and operational improvements.

CW Associates was Hawaii’s first member of the Employee Benefit Plan Audit Quality Center of The American Institute of CPAs (AICPA), which requires that all Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) employee benefit plan audit engagement personnel have current knowledge of applicable professional standards and the rules and regulations for ERISA. It also needs member firms to establish policies and procedures particular to the firm’s ERISA employees benefit plan audit practice to comply with the applicable professional standards and the center’s other membership requirements, and to make publicly available information about its most recently accepted peer review.

Employee benefit plan audits also represent a substantial part of CW Associates’ professional practice. They provide limited and full-scope audit services of defined benefit pension plans, Employee Stock Ownership Plans (ESOPs), Internal Revenue Code Section 401(k) plans, Internal Revenue Code Section 403(b) plans, single-employer pension plans, and multi-employer pension plans.

CW Associates CPA's Hawaii: 5 tips for implementing FASB’s credit loss standard

jasminegail — 2016-07-22 07:10:25 UTC

Revenue recognition and lease accounting standards have had a big impact on financial institutions. But new standards on reporting expected credit losses may be even more significant for banks.

“This is much more related to a bank’s core business,” said Reza Van Roosmalen, a KPMG LLP managing director. “It’s the biggest accounting change I think that banks have been subject to in a long time.”

FASB’s expected credit loss standard, which was issued in June, changes the reporting requirements from an incurred-loss to an expected-loss approach and addresses concerns about financial instruments accounting resulting from the financial crisis that began in 2007.

The International Accounting Standards Board also moved from incurred-loss to expected-loss accounting with the issuance of IFRS 9, Financial Instruments, in 2014, although its impairment model differs from FASB’s current expected credit loss (CECL) approach.

The FASB standard was intended to align accounting with the economics of lending by requiring the immediate recording of the full amount of credit losses that are expected. As a result, experts say the credit risk group and the accounting group will need to work closely together to comply with the standard.

“There’s going to be a need for education from accounting to the rest of the business partners,” said Jonathan Prejean, a Deloitte & Touche LLP managing director. “Obviously, the credit risk function is going to be involved, and your forecasting and your planning, and even the lines of business and how they write their business.”

5 considerations

Here are five things experts say preparers may want to consider as they begin to implement FASB’s expected credit loss standard:

The standard is not just for banks. Financial institutions and their accounting for their loan portfolios will be affected the most by the standard. But it also applies to other organizations.

Lease receivables, trade receivables, and held-to-maturity debt securities are among the other assets organizations may hold that are within the scope of the standard.

“This is not just a banking standard, and it’s not just loans,” said Jonathan Howard, a partner in the Deloitte & Touche LLP national office. “It applies to all entities that have assets that represent the right to receive cash that they carry at amortized cost.”

Find the data gaps. Because the implementation date is a few years away for the FASB standard (2020 for public companies), Prejean said, companies have time to collect the data they need—if they don’t already have it.

The issuance of the standard gives them the ability to move forward with an implementation plan, and a big part of that plan will be finding gaps where they don’t have data they will need to perform the accounting required by the standard.

“They can start pulling that data and making sure they have it, and make sure they’re collecting it if they have the ability to collect it,” Prejean said. “If they don’t, make sure they can find a way to get it, and then make sure that it’s appropriate for financial reporting.”

This includes making sure the appropriate controls are in place around the data.

Use previous work. Banks may be able to take advantage of their work from previous compliance exercises as they implement FASB’s credit loss standard.

“It’s important for banks to think about how they could approach the standard in the most efficient and scalable way, and look for similarities and synergies and maybe even corroborate some of the data and modeling as far as they can with existing models,” Van Roosmalen said.

Multinational organizations that have been implementing IFRS 9 may use that work to their advantage as they implement the FASB standard. Banks that have undergone stress-testing exercises may be able to expand the scope of that work to assist with the accounting implementation.

Remember disclosures. Figuring out how to collaborate with the credit risk function, evaluate your existing credit risk model, and select the appropriate risk model for your loan portfolio will be a big part of implementation.

While focusing on those issues is important, preparers shouldn’t lose sight of the enhanced disclosures and the data that will be needed to fulfill the disclosure requirements.

Don’t delay. Gathering data may be a challenge, but Howard said getting a quick start and figuring out what data are needed will help organizations make a smooth transition.

“I’m not saying everybody needs to go do a dry run today,” he said. “But you’ve got time. So I think people need to start thinking about how they are going to apply the standard so they can set up the processes to go about collecting that data, capturing that data, so that might ease your transition.” i��A}�HP�+