These top five ways come from Oracle's study of global financial reporting best practices as published in their whitepaper, The Future of Financial Reporting: A Market Perspective.

1. Keep abreast of the activities of accounting standards bodies.
2. Consider the positive impacts of voluntarily publishing a sustainability report.
3. Align data collection and consolidation processes.
4. Reduce the reliance on spreadsheets.
5. Become familiar with XBRL.

This report includes some key concepts that we have been writing about here at CPA Success, including staying on top of changing regulations and standards, sustainability, XBRL and Enhanced Business Reporting. Of significance is reconsidering XBRL as a way to standardize business reporting and make internal business processes and reporting much more efficient and the resulting savings (we have been saying this for awhile).

We cover a lot of these concepts in our professional issues updates / town hall meetings. See the schedule here. (The updates include four hours of free CPE for MACPA members only.)

How do you stay ahead of the curve? Click on comments and tell us what you think.

Resources:

• It's easy being green. Sustainability is the hard part
• XBRL resources on CPA Success, listing of all posts about XBRL on CPA Success
• XBRL Web site
• Enhanced Business Reporting -- the EBR360 Web site
• Enhanced Business Reporting: Its time has come
• Increasing Transparency: Enhanced Business Reporting -- one-hour session by EBR founder Bob Laux, CPA, of the Microsoft Corporation