EStG, OPOS list, P&L – what is daily bread for our team are sometimes Spanish villages for others. In order to make it easier for you to deal with tax and business topics and texts, we have included what we consider to be the most important terms in a wiki. We are always open for your expansion wishes!
- Assurance Audit
These include auditing services outside the scope of the final audit. This includes system audits, including those by Corporate Governance.
- Business evaluation
The value of an entire company or parts of a company is determined with the aid of the company valuation. The reasons why a company valuation is carried out can be different. One example of this is the purchase/sale of companies or in the context of creditworthiness checks by banks when granting loans.
- Compliance
Serves to prevent various corporate risks such as antitrust law, prohibition of insider trading, prevention of corruption, but also compliance with other regulations not anchored in the law or agreements on environmental protection.
- Continued pay
This refers to continued pay (continued payment of remuneration) in the event of illness. This means that the wage will continue to be paid for a certain period of time without any corresponding work being done.
An employee is entitled to continued pay from the time when his employment relationship lasts four weeks. It ends after six weeks, i.e. when the maximum limit of 42 calendar days is reached.
- Digitalization
The term digitization refers to the changes in processes, events and objects that occur with the increasing use of digital devices.
In short: Digitization = conversion of analog values into a digital form
All data can be processed using information technology, a principle that underlies all manifestations of the digital revolution in business, society, work and private life.
A company or a project can be checked for its profitability by means of various analyses. Opportunity costs, i.e. costs arising from lost revenues from an alternative investment, play a significant role here. Profitability measures the yield of a project or an entire company, for example, in relation to expenditure. The key figure profitability thus shows how efficient a company is: profitability increases when earnings or revenues increase or expenditure or costs decrease.
- Due Diligence
This term refers to the careful examination, analysis and thus the reliable assessment of companies. If a company takeover or participation is planned, a conscientious due diligence examination of the company should be carried out, especially with regard to the economic, tax, legal and financial circumstances.
- Electronic balance / e-balance sheet
E-balance sheet stands for electronic balance sheet and describes, as the name suggests, the electronic transmission of a company balance sheet to the responsible tax office.
- Employees online
The principle of employee online is that you can digitally distribute work. In addition, you are able to distribute payroll accounting to your employees online and automatically after payroll accounting.
From the employee’s point of view:
Employees online = an offer from your employer to work with you digitally. In the portal, it provides you with your personal data, for example, your wage and salary documents.
Your employer activates you for the use of employees online. You will then receive personal letters with which you can register in the system. You will then have access to all your necessary documents.
- Governance, Risk & Compliance / Corporate Governance
Governance, Risk & Compliance summarizes the three most important levels of action of a company for its successful management:
Governance is corporate management through defined guidelines. This includes the definition of corporate goals, the methodology used to implement them and the planning of the resources required to achieve the goals.
Risk stands for risk management with known and unknown risks through defined risk analyses. An important factor here is the early management of risks, the provision of strategies for risk minimisation and the preparation of loss buffers in the event of risk occurrence.
Compliance is compliance with internal and external standards for the provision and processing of information. This includes, among other things, specifications from standardization efforts and the access regulations for the data as well as the legal framework conditions for their use.
Corporate Governance
Corporate governance is the legal and factual integration of a company into its social and political ecosystem, which is influenced by social and legal labels. In order to reduce a deviation of the separate interests of the different shakeholders (groups of people who profit from the company’s business, for example), it is the task of the guidelines in the CG to limit risks without changing the corporate objective. In view of the fact that medium-sized companies are increasingly moving away from centralisation, this is becoming increasingly important.
The company-specific corporate governance system consists of:
- the totality of relevant laws
- guidelines
- codes
- letters of intent
- corporate mission statement
- corporate governance practices
- Process organization
The aim of a company’s process organization is to efficiently meet customer needs.
A distinction is made between core processes (including production processes, material processes, logistics processes), management processes (personnel management, financial management, project management,…) and supporting processes (accounting, canteen, maintenance). The customer does not benefit directly from the latter, but is nevertheless essential for the correct business processes.
Within a work process, the individual producers work closely together with specific functions and services.
- Profit and Loss Account / P&L
This abbreviation denotes the profit and loss statement, which, along with the balance sheet, is an obligatory part of the annual financial statements of merchants. Expenses and income for a period of time are compared in order to determine the company result.
- Profitability analysis
In an economic analysis, the economic viability of systems, system proposals, projects, companies, etc. is assessed and checked. This is done in three steps, whereby the object to be analysed is divided into parts in the first step. These are then characterized in detail. This is followed by a summary of the results to a final result. The result is a cost-benefit ratio. The increase in profitability is reflected in the increase in revenues/earnings or in the decrease in costs and expenses.
- Turnaround management
This is used if a company is stuck in an economic crisis. Turnaround management is an attempt to get it back on track and protect it from insolvency. One speaks of a “reorganization” of the company.
The first step in this process is to initiate restructuring measures. This is followed by an analysis of the company’s initial situation. Subsequently, the concrete implementation of the turnaround plan is set in motion. Finally, it is essential that structural changes are consistently pursued, as otherwise a relapse into the initial situation would be possible.