Materiality as a Process
This report helps finance officers identify opportunities to reduce low-value effort, assess qualitative and quantitative issues affecting materiality.
Rethinking Materiality
Rethinking Materiality
Materiality is central to financial reporting, yet it is often applied as a narrow technical threshold rather than an ongoing decision-making process. Our research introduces a more practical approach.
Why You Should Rethink Materiality
Finding the Balance
This report suggests local governments are often overly cautious about what counts as “material,” adding unnecessary cost and complexity to financial reporting. By shifting the focus to decision-useful accuracy rather than exhaustive precision, the profession can streamline reporting, save staff time, and maintain public trust.
Three Forces that Reshaped Lease Reporting in Newport Beach
This case study shows how a thoughtful approach to materiality can reduce workload, improve efficiency, and maintain transparency while successfully addressing materiality decisions with auditors.
The Post Pounder Test
When Sweet Grass County bought a $5,000 post pounder and added it to its capital asset schedule, Finance Officer Vicki Uehling asked: Why are we spending so much time tracking assets like this?
Expanding the Use of Estimates for Better, Faster Financial Reporting
This report argues that governments should use estimates more broadly when they provide sufficient accuracy for decisions at lower cost. The question is not whether estimates are appropriate—financial reporting already depends on them—but when additional precision meaningfully improves a user’s ability to make decisions and when it does not.