Using Decisions for the CARES Act on Impairment Testing Requirements
It goes without saying that global and national financial markets have been rattled by volatility over the past several months due to the uncertainty caused by the spread of the coronavirus (COVID-19). In addition to the substantial impacts on public health and the strain on health services and local governments, the downstream effects of COVID-19 have been widespread among business operations.
Based on the January-March 2020 impacts on the Dow Jones Industrial Average or the S&P 500 Index—which declined approximately 24 percent and 21 percent, respectively—businesses are already feeling the impact on their financial statements through impairments. At the same time, the federal government’s CARES Act Tax Relief legislation introduces a number of considerations and details that each business needs to track in order to stay compliant.
When the last thing a business needs is more complexity, Decisions can help create software for tracking accounting changes, monitoring relief funding, and ensuring compliance with new standards.
COVID-19 As a Triggering Event
The painful market forces resulting from COVID-19 have impacted businesses in such a way that it will qualify as a triggering event for goodwill impairment testing for some companies. And the longer that COVID-19 spreads and disrupts businesses, the more businesses will experience such a triggering event. As a result, more and more impairment charges will be required on the financial statements for these companies.
Ultimately, companies must decide when a disruption to their business operations from COVID-19 meets such a threshold. However, a process to track short- and long-term effects for financial professionals—and the law firms and accounting firms that support them—will need to be created. Answers to questions about interruptions to supply chains, workforce levels, building closures, or receivables can change overnight, which can change your impairment calculation.
Developing this type of streamlined, flexible, and user-friendly tracking or triggering process sits in Decisions’ wheelhouse. Through the use of a visual, no-code interface paired with built-in rules, workflows, and dashboards, Decisions can quickly and effectively help your business monitor and watch over these changes to your operations so they can be accurately accounted for.
Leverage Decisions to Maintain CARES Act Compliance
Adding to the whirlwind of pressures facing businesses, agencies such as the Small Business Administration (SBA) and the U.S. Treasury Department are initiating their own lending programs, including the Paycheck Protection Program. Although implementation of these programs is well underway, the limited legislative language, rules, provisions, and timelines are still being fully deciphered.
In the midst of all this frenetic action and evolving requirements, is your business ready to track incoming CARES Act funding, how it is being spent, and any conditions associated with the money?
Here, too, Decisions is poised to help your business develop a solution to fit your particular needs. Business process mapping tied with workflow and rules can be established to track funding, document required conditions, and establish methods to monitor and watch for overall compliance. When the dust finally settles on COVID-19, businesses armed with such a solution can feel confident that they will have the information and documentation they need to demonstrate how funds were used and to maintain compliance.
Take the Next Step
In a time of dramatic complexity, the Decisions team is standing by to provide seven-day digital sprints to break down your business challenge from idea to a minimum viable digital product or prototype with urgency. Along the way, our design team can quickly customize workflows to meet your situation, demonstrate potential functionality, and provide a set of action steps needed to take the prototype over the finish line and into production.
To learn more, contact the Decisions team so we can gather your requirements and quickly iterate user experience and business logic on the Decisions no-code automation platform.
