Though Miller Industries (MLR), a towing and recovery equipment manufacturer, says the years-old accounting errors are less than 3.6% of the impacted accounts, they cannot be corrected as out-of-period adjustments as doing so would cause a material misstatement in those financial statements. The company plans to correct the errors in quarterly filings throughout 2023 and revealed the impact of the errors for its 2019, 2020, and 2021 results in its latest annual report.

The company blamed an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system upgrade for failing to eliminate transactions between Miller entities. In the fourth quarter of 2022, Miller says it performed a review of the historical eliminations and determined some were not eliminated as they should’ve and:

“These elimination errors occurred beginning in 1996 with the acquisition our foreign subsidiaries, continued through 2006 and were carried forward through 2021.” 

The impact of the errors are as follows:

—Miller overstated PPE by $1.2 million, or 1.26% between 2019-2021
—Miller understated accounts payab;e by $2.7 million, or 2.26% between 2019-2021
—Miller overstated accumulated surplus by $3.9 million, or 3.6% between 2019-2021