Robert K. Elliott, while still chairman of the American Institute of the CPAs and testifying before Congress, has it right when he says: "Unfortunately the current accounting model is somewhat out of date. It is very much based on the assumption that profitability depends on physical assets, like plant and machinery; on raw materials, like coal, iron ore, sheet metal, electrical wire, and plastic -- in other words, on the tangible inputs needed to produce tangible products. This is the accounting model of the industrial age."

But we are no longer in the industrial age, Elliott says. "We still have elements of it, of course, and we always will, but we have moved deeply into the information age. We now have information companies, companies that do research and produce findings that they hope to profit from. Manufacturing companies are no longer rooted solely or predominantly in the physical. The role of intellectual inputs that ultimately lead to sales has multiplied enormously. The range of these inputs runs from patentable ideas to marketing, process design, computer programs, know-how, brand names, work-force expertise and training, quality controls, executive strategy, and organizational mechanisms to generate both quality improvements and innovation. All of these things can add to corporate revenues."

Elliot is right, also, when he blames today's stock market volatility at last in part on "the relative absence of up-to-date information with which to assess corporate earning capacity." The world is moving too fact for accountants and financial reporting rules to keep up.

"The annual and quarterly reporting regime is not only on its way to becoming less and less useful, it is on its way to becoming a dinosaur," Elliott says bluntly.

Others have said that auditors may still charge as much, or maybe even less, for the basic report. But as real-time, universal reporting becomes more in demand, they'll charge by the click. Companies will pay for how useful their financial reporting is for investors. And isn't that the way it ought to be? The fact is that none of this is new, the so-called Jenkins committee, headed by Ed Jenkins, now chair of the Financial Accounting Standards Board, predicted this more than six years ago.

The only question left is: What's taking so long?


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