An enterprise resource planning (ERP) system is technically "live" when users can successfully log in and process transactions. However, for finance, audit, and governance professionals, an ERP is only successfully implemented if the organisation can reliably reconcile its cash, close its ledgers, preserve access controls, and produce an auditable set of financial statements. Case in brief In 2018, Birmingham City Council approved plans to replace its legacy SAP systems with Oracle for finance, human resources, and procurement. During the design and build phases, the programme departed from its original "Adopt not Adapt" principle, opting instead for extensive software customisations to fit existing legacy workflows. The system went live in April 2022. Post-implementation, core accounting functions were severely impaired. The Council lost the ability to execute timely, accurate bank reconciliations or rely on its management information. This heavily delayed th...

 Many organizations spend time on strategy, budgets, systems, structures, policies, and performance targets. These are necessary. But they do not work in isolation. Behind them sits a less visible but more powerful foundation: organizational culture. Culture is the way people actually behave inside an organization. It is seen in how decisions are made, how mistakes are handled, how leaders communicate, how employees treat customers, and how teams respond when pressure increases. A company may have a strong strategy on paper. But if its culture rewards silence, protects poor conduct, tolerates shortcuts, or avoids difficult conversations, that strategy will struggle in practice. Culture Is The Organization’s Operating System Organizational culture is not limited to written values or slogans. It is the organization’s operating system. It shapes the daily answers to practical questions: Do people speak up when something is wrong? Are decisions based on evidence, hierarchy, p...

The workplace-culture reviews of the United States Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) illustrate why "tone at the top" is not merely a leadership concept; it is part of the control environment . Formal values, training and complaint channels can lose credibility when employees fear retaliation, senior leaders are perceived to receive different treatment, or management cannot produce reliable information about complaints and disciplinary outcomes. The case also demonstrates that culture reform requires more than a new policy. Reporting arrangements must be trusted, investigations must be independent, consequences must be consistent, and boards or equivalent oversight bodies must receive enough information to identify patterns that individual cases may conceal. Scope of the case brief This brief examines official reviews published between 2020 and 2025, remediation measures subsequently reported by the FDIC, and the status of relevant Office of Inspector Genera...

FGL review: September 2026 · Topic: finance automation, systems and controls · Audience: accountants, finance teams and reviewers Does an accountant need IT knowledge to perform effectively? Yes—but not because every accountant needs to become a software engineer. The more useful standard is whether the accountant understands enough about systems, data flows, automation and controls to explain how financial information is created, challenge what a system produces and recognise when technology is creating rather than reducing risk. That distinction matters because finance automation is no longer limited to macros and recurring journals. Finance teams now work with ERP workflows, automated bank feeds, invoice capture, robotic process automation, dashboards, system integrations and increasingly AI-enabled tools. Professional bodies are responding to the same shift: IFAC describes automation and AI as tools that can move accountants away from repetitive rule-based work toward insi...

Jurisdiction: Uganda · Topic: Transfer pricing and tax dispute management · Status: Pending before the Tax Appeals Tribunal at the time of this FGL review · FGL review: 21 September 2026 Stanbic Bank Uganda Limited and Stanbic Uganda Holdings Limited are contesting a major transfer-pricing assessment by the Uganda Revenue Authority (URA). Public reporting places the working dispute figure at approximately UGX 117.8 billion , and the Tax Appeals Tribunal listed TAT Application No. 170 of 2025 for conferencing in June 2026. This article does not attempt to decide who is right. The dispute is still being litigated. Instead, it uses the publicly available record to explain what finance teams can learn about related-party charges, evidence, tax governance and the management of unresolved assessments. What the dispute is about The dispute arises from URA's review of related-party transactions involving Stanbic's Ugandan operations and entities within the wider...

Case in brief In 2021, Mazars LLP (now Forvis Mazars LLP) served as the statutory auditor for Studio Retail Group (SRG), a London-listed digital catalogue retailer. The audit engagement partner signed off on the financial statements for the year ending 26 March 2021, issuing an unmodified opinion. The auditor concluded that the directors’ use of the going-concern basis was appropriate and reported that no material uncertainty relating to going concern had been identified. In February 2022, just eight months after the audit report was signed, Studio Retail Group entered administration. The insolvency wiped out shareholder equity and exposed creditors to substantial losses before the business was acquired in a pre-packaged administration sale. Following a regulatory investigation, the UK Financial Reporting Council (FRC) issued a Final Settlement Decision Notice in July 2026. The FRC fined the firm £577,125 (discounted for exceptional cooperation) and the engagement partner £33,412....