And he’s right-German strategy doesn’t work well for Russia at Austerlitz, the more “Russian” General Kutuzov is presciently resigned to the failure of the younger generals’ elaborate offensive strategy. In Volume 1, Prince Nikolai (who is identified with the older, more Russian generation) teases his son Andrei by mocking the German influence on the modern Russian military. German strategic approaches dominate Russian warfare. To maintain a place in aristocratic society, a good Russian must act culturally “French” even while denouncing French “monstrosity.” At the same time, the conversation suggests that Russia alone, led by “angelic” Emperor Alexander, can be Europe’s “savior” against the “monstrous” Corsican/French Napoleon. The novel literally opens with French conversation, as Anna Pavlovna Scherer welcomes people to one of her famous soirées, which typically showcase French émigrés. Aristocratic Russians love all things French. Within aristocratic society, there’s an internal contradiction-can aristocrats remain authentically Russian while embracing “European” things? Tolstoy suggests they can’t. He suggests instead that Russia and its people thrive when they’re true to their own culture and values, instead of importing foreign ideas that tend to undermine what Russian people know best. With such examples, Tolstoy isn’t saying that European values are totally corrupt or meaningless. However, these don’t work well in the long run-or at least they can’t suppress authentically “Russian” instincts in the novel’s characters, such as religious piety and love of life. Aristocrats aspire to “European” traits, like an obsession with French culture and the adoption of complicated German war strategies. Throughout the novel, Tolstoy contrasts aristocratic Russia (which is European-influenced, contrived, and often pretentious) and traditional Russia (which is more instinctual, more honest, and more authentic overall). Appendix: A Few Words Apropos of the Book War and Peace. “These analytics provide audit clients with bite-sized chunks of issues they can work on and then track over time because dashboards can be built in so there’s no extra work involved for them. “This extra value-add is actionable information,” Howell said. One feature of whole ledger analytics enables auditors to gain a different perspective based on examining combinations of accounts. This analysis can be compared with the close calendar to see which functions were late booking entries and which entries were early or on time. Whole ledger analytics can provide a detailed analysis of when entries were booked after a closing period. Reveal efficiencies that can shorten the close process. While this is not a preventive control, it can lead to cost recovery, and sometimes the duplicate amounts can be substantial. Duplicate payment tests can search for variations of the vendor number, invoice number, invoice date and invoice amount fields. Whole ledger analytics can help the organization discover duplicate payments. In a large and complex organization, the risk of duplicate payments to vendors - even if inadvertent - is very real. Whole ledger analytics also can be used to:ĭiscover duplicate payments. “How much longer they going to tolerate the job, right? They want to be doing higher value-added things.” “If you've got people that are being paid a high salary and they book 1,000 entries a year, is that really what you want them doing in today's work environment?” Howell asked. It may also increase satisfaction among staff who don’t enjoy the tedious job of booking manual entries. When audit clients can decrease their number of manual entries, they create opportunities to reduce headcount or provide staff opportunities to perform more valuable tasks. Whole ledger analytics can quickly show which of those entries are not automated, as well as who made the manual entries. “The key is giving them opportunities that they can work on in bite-sized chunks.”įor example, because fixed assets is a common module across most major enterprise resource planning systems, it would be reasonable to anticipate that the integration between the fixed asset module and the general ledger would result in all depreciation expenses being recorded in an automated fashion throughout the year. “Accountants are great about wanting metrics, but they typically don’t have enough metrics about their own activity,” Howell said. Whole ledger analytics provides the capability to identify which journal entries are done manually, which are automated, and how many manual journal entries each employee is performing. An audit client might know that, say, 60% of its journal entries are manual but it might need insight on which entries could be automated. One significant source of wasted effort in finance departments is the performance of journal entries when systems are capable of entering them automatically.
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