K Fi Foundation Burrito People!

jkfin — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 02:51:52 +0000

K Fi Crew serving up breakfast

On February 16, the K Financial team spent the morning at one of our favorite “Spots” for community service events – The Spot in downtown Denver. The Spot is an outreach center for homeless youth. The K Fi Foundation contributed a variety of supplies and breakfast items for this event. We dropped off 5 bags of goodness from the Spot’s wishlist, including blankets, long underwear, chap stick and t-shirts. We also served up 50 Santiago’s breakfast burritos, juice and tons of apples, oranges and bananas. We always meet some interesting and lively characters at these events. One very large young lady asked if we had a hefty bag that she could use. We located the bag for her, thinking that maybe she was going to help clean up around the Spot or otherwise put the bag to good use. But instead she started loading up all of the fruit and other items that we brought. It appeared that she was going to try to sell these items because she needed to know some specific information about them, such as what kind of apples we had brought and where they were from. Luckily our friend Amy at the Spot talked the large young woman out of loading up her hefty bag so we had enough goodies for everyone.

Employee Benefit Plans DOL Criminal Enforcement Cases

jkfin — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 14:34:46 +0000

The AICPA Employee Benefit Plan Audit Quality Center has developed a summary analysis of the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) Employee Benefit Security Administration’s criminal enforcement actions involving employee benefit plans during the period April 2009 through November 2011. The summary includes actual fraud cases categorized by plan type. This tool helps to demonstrate how fraud might be committed and concealed in a benefit plan. Here is a link to a pdf of the tool:

DOL EBSA Criminal Case Summaries

Risk Appetite Guidance Published by COSO

jkfin — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 19:29:55 +0000

The Committee of Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commission (COSO) released a new thought paper aimed at helping organizations better articulate, develop, and implement “risk appetite.” Enterprise Risk Management – Understanding and Communicating Risk Appetite is the latest in a series of COSO papers providing guidance on improving risk management. While helping many of our clients develop and maintain ERM programs, we have found that risk appetite is one of the most challenging pieces of the ERM puzzle. Risk appetite is the amount of risk organizations are willing to accept in pursuit of their objectives. The COSO thought paper provides example statements of risk appetite and guidance on how companies can effectively develop and document risk appetite. The concepts in the paper will be incorporated into K Financial’s ERM software in the coming months. The COSO paper is available for free at www.coso.org.

K Fi Foundation Hosts 2nd Annual Christmas Party at the Kidney Center

jkfin — Sat, 17 Dec 2011 00:39:55 +0000

On December 12, the K Financial team hosted one of its best events yet. We spent the morning with our good friends at the Kidney Center in Denver Children’s Hospital having an excellent Christmas celebration. We had a great time with the kids, trying to make their dialysis treatment a little different than they are used to and a lot of fun. First we painted Christmas tree ornaments, then we decorated cookies and finally we opened presents. The K Fi Foundation provided many DVD movies for the kids to watch during treatment and also gave them an iPad to use. A big thank you to Lonny and Angie for coordinating this wonderful event!

(Side note: As he has done in the past, our colleague Daniel painted a very nice ornament and did a good job decorating cookies.)

Helpful Tool for Year End 401(k) Plan Review

jkfin — Sat, 17 Dec 2011 00:10:19 +0000

Every year it is important for 401(k) plan administrators to review the requirements for their plan’s operation. This annual review is a “best practice” that is often overlooked, but could save you time, money and headaches in the coming year. The IRS has published a very helpful checklist to help you keep your plan in compliance with many of the important rules. This tool helps you to find, fix and avoid the 10 most common mistakes that plan’s make. We recommend you set aside a few hours before the end of the year to complete the checklist. Your friends at K Financial are happy to help you with this if you can not fit it in before year end. Click here for the IRS 401(k) Plan Checklist

K Fi Foundation Hits the Spot!

jkfin — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 16:35:52 +0000

On November 3, 2011, the K Financial team delivered and served breakfast to homeless youth at the Urban Peak’s’ drop in center, “The Spot”. The mission of Urban Peak is to help homeless youth overcome their challenges and become self-sufficient adults by providing essential services and a supportive community. We served up 40 Santiago’s breakfast burritos, dozens of donuts, fruit and juice to the kids. We also brought them 5 bags of supplies from their wish list, including soap, shampoo, deodorant and long underwear.

The Spot was a much more controlled environment than what we have gotten used to the last few years when we distribute food, clothes and other items on the street in Denver. On our last few visits to Denver we have been criticized by the police and business owners for drawing crowds of needy folks where we distribute our goods. The Spot was a much more relaxed environment and we will definitely return there soon. The “Poetry Room” where we were stationed was all brick with nice graffiti that reminded us of the old tv program 21 Jump Street.

Improving Internal Controls

jkfin — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 20:31:27 +0000

Internal control improvements are often perceived as adding cost to an organization. In fact, the argument against some control improvements is that the cost to implement them outweighs the benefits they create. There are some control improvements, however, that have a high likelihood of generating true economic returns.

Detective vs. Preventative Controls

Every control can be classified as either preventative or detective. That is, controls either prevent errors before they occur or they detect errors after they have occurred but in time to correct them before they do significant damage. Both types of controls are important, but in general, preventative controls are preferred for two reasons. First, because detective controls come into play after errors have occurred, the errors can have a negative impact on the business up until the point they are detected. Second, it is usually cheaper to prevent errors than to detect and fix them after they occur. For these reasons, preventative controls generally have a higher “economic value” to an organization.

Companies can drive value from internal controls and improve their bottom line by looking at the nature of controls that operate in significant areas and considering the proper balance of detective versus preventative controls. For example, a company that relies primarily on reconciliations and monitoring controls to find errors after the fact in the order entry process might look to establish some front-end controls like batch balancing or system edit checks to prevent errors from getting into the system in the first place.

Detective controls are designed to identify an error or exception after it has occurred. Examples include:	Preventative controls focus on preventing errors or exceptions. Examples include:
Exception reports Reconciliations Reviews of operating performance Periodic inventories	Use of checklists Training Proper segregation of duties Authorization levels / approval

Manual vs. Automated Controls

Just as all controls can be categorized as preventative or detective, they can also be categorized as manual or automated. And just as preventative controls are generally preferred over detective ones, automated controls are generally preferred over manual ones. Automated controls are typically more reliable than manual controls because they are not subject to the same degree of human error. Automated controls also tend to be more efficient than manual ones and can provide more valuable, timely and reliable information to management for decision-making purposes. There are places where manual controls are critical, especially in complex or dynamic processes, or in places where judgment is required. But a good analysis of processes that utilize numerous manual controls can often uncover significant automation improvement opportunities.

Manual controls operate through human intervention. They are the most flexible but are also subject to human error. Examples include:	Automated controls operate through and within information technology systems. They function systematically and work with a high degree of consistency. Examples include:
Reconciliation of amounts entered to source documents Signatures / initials on completed documents Budget-to-actual reviews Re-performance of computations	System access controls Data entry requirements prior to transaction processing Automated balancing and reconciliations Automated flags that identify possible invalid or duplicate entries / data

Investing the time to identify areas where preventative controls and / or automated controls might be implemented is likely to pay off in the long run. It simply requires a process for first inventorying existing controls based on their attributes (manual vs. automated; preventative vs. detective) and then looking at those attributes in the context of the control and business process environment. This can be accomplished by considering the following:

What areas rely heavily on detective or manual controls?
Is there a business or control reason why these detective controls or manual controls are needed?
What impact could shifting these controls to be more preventative or automated have on the reliability and economics of a given process?

Department of Labor Takes Actions Against Employee Benefit Plans

jkfin — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 19:21:43 +0000

The Department of Labor (DOL) released information yesterday that underscores the importance of high-quality and effective audits of employee benefit plans. The DOL has filed a complaint in federal court seeking to restore over $400,000 to two benefit plans. The lawsuit alleges that the plans’ administrator failed to account for money deposited to the plans and that the trustees of the plan failed in their fiduciary responsibilities by neglecting to monitor the actions of the plan administrator. Specifically, the trustees failed to review and reconcile account statements for 5500 filings, review participant distribution calculations and require the administrator to issue participant statements. A link to the full DOL release is below.

DOL seeks to recover more than $436,000 for 2 employee benefit plans of Columbus, Ohio-based Clark Graphics [10/12/2011]

Climbing La Plata Peak

jkfin — Sat, 06 Aug 2011 20:09:41 +0000

K Fi Team on top of La Plata. Dark clouds rolling in.

On August 4, 2011, the K Financial team hit the road at 3:15 AM to climb La Plata Peak, a 14,336 mountain in the Sawatch Range. We arrived at the trail head a little after 6 AM and began our adventure. We were messing around and enjoying the wilderness a little too much at the start of our hike and missed a critical right hand turn, heading to the left instead. By the time we realized we were on the wrong

Signing in

We have lost the trail - but will find our way.

trail, we had gone too far to turn back. So we voted to press ahead and blaze our own trail.

Daniel and Brian in boulder field, hoping to find the trail soon.

We navigated our way along a stream through a thick forest. At times there appeared to be a trail, but it eventually disappeared and we were on our own. Finally, when we hit about 11,800 feet and were above tree line, we were able to assess where we were and what direction we needed to go. We realized we had gone pretty far off course and

Daniel stops for a siesta in a boulder field

needed to cross some boulder fields and other extreme terrain to get back to the trail. After about 3 hours of bushwhacking, we re-connected with the trail on the final approach to the summit. This was a happy moment for all. We had to climb about 1,500 feet in the last mile, which

Trail blazing is about to be over. There is the trail on the final approach. Sky looks nice and clear for our final mile.

was going to be tough. The sky was dark blue with very few clouds, so the final climb seemed like it would be uneventful. As we ascended, though, dark clouds started rolling in and by the time we reached the top we started hearing thunder. So we snapped a few pictures, exchanged some high fives and headed down the peak as fast as we could. It rained most of the way down, but that did not matter too much. The hike was fully awesome!

Daniel and Brian on the top

Lonny hitting the summit

Rockies Game with MSV Home

jkfin — Sat, 06 Aug 2011 19:31:47 +0000

The K Financial team took 6 awesome kids from Mount Saint Vincent Home to a Rockies game on August 2, 2011. The Rocks did not do so well, but we had a great time with the kids. The K Financial Foundation set the kids up with Rockies ball caps and dinner at the stadium.