Over the past several months, there have been big developments in the area of sustainability and integrated reporting, as several leading standards setters have combined their efforts and began staking out a path to the future of this field. As events move forward on the macro level, many smaller business owners and the CPAs that serve such business can understandably wonder what the impact will be for them. This month's cover story recaps recent developments in the area of environmental, social, and governance reporting and relates them to in-depth case studies of small companies that have wholeheartedly adopted ESG principles and used them to invigorate their businesses while contributing to their communities.

This month also marks our annual technology issue. A number of articles throughout the issue look at the promises, and the limitations, of both emerging and established technologies. For example, while businesses have become increasingly reliant upon data, it is rare that an entity possesses a set of clean data, making it essential for CPAs to recognize and work around “dirty” data in order to advise prudent financial decisions.

Smart contracts, which use computer code to automatically execute contract terms, have been used in niche applications to date, but the authors argue they present a radical solution to the problem of valuation disputes between taxpayers and the IRS. Software as a Service (SaaS) has gone from the cutting edge to the mainstream, but given the wide scope of cloud services companies engage in as SaaS, it is also important to understand the attendant risks these services present. The authors describe those risks as well as the best practices for available controls. Finally, stablecoins, a class of digital asset touted as being constant in value, have become increasingly popular. But recent market declines and regulatory scrutiny have turned the spotlight on the transparency of companies' reporting and the quality of the assets backing the values of stablecoins.

~/cpaj-images/CPA.2022.92.7.001.uf001.jpg