Here in the newspaper business we're painfully familiar with comments pertaining to the editing process making it into final print. The Boston Globe is still famous for publishing a jokey headline that was intended only as a temporary placeholder on an editorial about Jimmy Carter: "MORE MUSH FROM THE WIMP." When I was an overworked editor at another paper years ago I once published a reporter's story without removing my notes from the copy: "WHAT DOES THIS MEAN?" and "??????" etc.

Never seen it with financial reports, however, until now. One of the accountants at NZ Farming Systems Uruguay apparently gave a helpful bit of advice to a colleague so s/he could make the books balance. In the table reconciling the income and cash statements, somebody wrote on the depreciation line: "fudge this to equal depn in FA note 11S 2391."

Oops.

NZ Farming Uruguay replied to regulators:

While the words in the comment were not well chosen, they were merely a prompt for the author of the Financial Statements to reconfirm the rounding difference expressed in an early draft of the Financial Statements where there was a minor rounding discrepancy.

HT Barry Ritholtz.