SHIRLEY A. BASS, CPA
President, Bass & Company
Shirley Bass is a certified public accountant with over fourteen
years of accounting and management experience in both the public and private
sectors. In addition, she has extensive experience in teaching and research.
Five
years ago she founded, and is now the senior partner of, Bass & Company,
an accounting consulting firm. Ms. Bass has worked with main frame and
micro-computer based accounting software since the late 1970s with emphasis
on systems for businesses and organizations with cost center, grant or
project cost reporting requirements. She has extensive experience in planning
accounting system conversions, designing accounting structures that are
compliant with FAR, CAS and various OMB circulars, and instructing both
accounting staff and management in optimizing the use of accounting data
generated by their system for effective management and profitability.
Her wide range of consulting experience in the government contracting environment includes extensive involvement in allowability and allocability issues, indirect rate structures, policy and procedure development, cost proposal development and review, Cost Accounting Standards (CAS) compliance, contract and grant reporting and financing, contract terminations and claim preparation, and defective pricing. She has served as an expert witness in bid protests before the GSBCA and in negotiating settlements for terminated contracts.
Ms. Bass' clients include for-profit companies and not-for-profit organizations which perform a wide variety of work both in the United States and abroad as well as foreign companies with offices in the U.S. Her clients are involved in work ranging from the design and building of steering controls for naval ships to the development of flexible computer boards for children's games; from high tech research and development projects subject to the highest levels of security clearances to refuse collection services; from supporting community health centers in the United States to supporting relief efforts and the development of public and private hospitals, schools and agricultural projects in Europe, Asia, Africa and South America. She has also performed financial program review work for the U.S. Trade and Development Agency on a grant made to a foreign government for work to be performed primarily by a U.S. company in the foreign country. This consulting engagement was performed in accordance with the Government Auditing Standards (Yellow Book).
Ms. Bass has a wide range of experience with generic and vertical market accounting software on multiple platforms. In her commitment to office automation, she has been involved in integrating other information systems and data bases with the accounting software. She has worked with programmers to develop customizations and "front ends" to off-the-shelf packages to tailor them for the specific needs of her clients. She has experience with a number of report writing tools as well as Visual Basic and Structured Query Language (SQL).
Ms. Bass is an expert in project cost accounting and has worked with many systems to facilitate the capture of appropriate project cost accounting data elements and utilize that information in meaningful management reports.
PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE
Before opening her own firm, Ms. Bass was in charge of the Micro-Computer Financial Decision Support Systems Department of Ernst & Young's Entrepreneurial Services Group. There she performed needs analysis, system selection, implementation and training services for the firm's small to medium sized clients nation-wide including many government contractors. In addition she helped companies devise business plans and seek funding for working capital, expansion, mergers and acquisitions. She performed due diligence reviews for business acquisitions and helped the parties merge their indirect rate structures after the acquisition. She managed audits of government contractors and performed internal control and financial management reviews. She also worked as a government contract consultant to small and medium sized businesses with the firm's National Government Contracting Services group where she assisted the firm's clients with a wide variety of DCAA audits, contract termination settlements and incurred cost reviews, and provided litigation support for contract disputes.
Ms. Bass worked in the private sector as a DCAA liaison for government audits and investigations at Planning Research Corporation (PRC). She supported cost proposals and indirect rate submission reviews with DCAA. She also worked with management on policies, procedures and regulatory compliance programs, and was involved in their accounting system conversion. She also served as the chief financial officer of the Facilities Management Division of Evaluation Research Corporation (ERC) where she dealt with a wide variety of accounting system, management and government regulatory compliance issues. There she managed the design of a NASA 533 reporting program to work with the division's accounting system.
EDUCATION AND PROFESSIONAL AFFILIATIONS
Ms. Bass received her B.A. degree from Queens College and her M.S. from Southern Connecticut State University. She is a Certified Public Accountant in the state of Virginia and a member of the Virginia Society of CPAs, the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants and the Information Technology and Management Consulting Divisions of the AICPA. She is also a member of the Institute of Management Accountants (IMA) where she recently served as Vice President for Education. As a member of the National Contract Management Association (NCMA), she has worked on the National Electronic Contracting Conference and the Acquisition Research Symposium.
Ms. Bass has also served on the Solomon Software Advisor Board . She has co-authored a white paper on the SBA loan programs. She is a frequent lecturer for the Howard University Small Business Development Center, IMA and NCMA on Government contract topics. She also serves as a speaker at the Virginia Society of CPAs annual update seminar and at the Northern Chapter’s monthly meetings on Government contracting and non-for-profit issues as well as accounting systems, EDI, the Internet and protecting data through encryption.