Please wait
VIA
EDGAR
Mr. Ryan
Rohn, Staff Accountant
Division
of Corporation Finance
United
States Securities and Exchange Commission
100 F
Street, N. E.
Mail Stop
4561
Washington,
D. C. 20549-4561
Item 4.02 Form 8-K
Filed April 16, 2010
File No. 001-32634
Dear Mr.
Rohn:
This
letter responds to your comment letter of May 24, 2010 regarding the above
referenced filing made by Smart Online, Inc. (the “Company”) with the Securities
and Exchange Commission (the “Commission”). This letter includes each comment
from your letter in bold with the Company’s responses set forth immediately
below.
General
|
|
1.
|
We
note that your response letter does not include the representations
requested in the closing of our prior comment letter. The
representations in the closing of our letter dated April 21, 2010 must be
signed by the company’s management. Please provide all three
acknowledgements in the form previously
requested.
|
RESPONSE
Please
see the end of this letter for the representations requested.
Form
8-K Filed on April 16, 2010
2. We
note your response to our prior comment number 2. It is unclear to us
why you are recording the payment of revenue sharing amount as a sales and
marketing expense component of the operating expenses. Please
tell us the accounting guidance that you have cited to recognize these expenses
as sales commissions. Also tell us if this is a consistent treatment
for all of your contracts that you recognize on a gross basis. We
repeat our prior comment to tell us how you considered accounting guidance in
ASC 205-10-25-9 through 12.
RESPONSE
Clarification
of the facts concerning sales reported on the “gross” basis, as previously
communicated to you:
During
2007 and 2008 we were conducting business with individual business operators, or
“IBOs”, who are our customers. The IBOs were also members of an
organization where they purchased memberships, training and
merchandise. Our Company had an arrangement with the membership
organization whereby the membership organization is paid a commission for the
solicitation of new consumers of our services. We analyzed
the contract between our Company and the member organization and determined that
the nature of the remittances to the member organization was not dependent upon
the services we provide to the organization, but rather represents a commission
for soliciting those customers on our behalf. Accordingly, we
report those payments as commissions includible in the sales and marketing
portion of operating expenses. Based upon the above facts, we do not
believe that ASC 205-10-25-9 through 12 apply to our specific circumstances,
since the membership organization is not our customer but rather the individual
IBOs, who happen to be members of the organization. Since the
membership organization truly functions as a sales representative and receives
compensation for the sales efforts, these payments are properly classified as
sales commissions.
|
|
3.
|
We
note your response to our prior comment number 3. Tell us the
staff member that you had your telephone discussion with on April 13,
2010. Provide us the fact pattern that was provided to the
Staff and the conclusion reached from the discussion. In
addition, provide us with your SAB 99 analysis that a restatement of the
respective financial statements is not
necessary.
|
RESPONSE
During
the course of discussions with Mr. Steven Jacobs of the Commission’s Division of
Corporate Finance regarding another registrant matter, our external auditors
(Cherry, Baekart and Holland, LLP) requested Mr. Jacobs’s input based on an
outline of facts and circumstances provided by the external
auditors. Mr. Jacobs was not made aware of the registrant’s name, nor
was he provided with specific dollar amounts. During the course
of that discussion, Mr. Jacobs recommended that the Company’s restatement
disclosure, which the Company included in Note 13 to the Company’s December 31,
2009 financial statements, should include the effects of the quarterly
restatements in addition to the annual impact. This information was
also provided in the Company’s 8-K filed on April 16, 2010 under item
4.02. Although Mr. Jacobs’s advice was informal and not intended as a
grant of a special waiver of any filing requirement, the objective of the
enhanced disclosure was to address any misstatements in the previous
filings.
With
respect to providing our SAB 99 analysis, we would like to clarify that the 2008
corrections for the gross versus net presentation resulted in a netting of only
$993,806 in the annual statements (and substantially less for each quarter in
2008) and had no impact on the reported net loss of over $10 million.
We believe that these changes in the restatement footnote (Note 13 of
the December 31, 2009 10-K) were appropriate to insure the comparability between
the 2009 and 2008 reporting periods, and not necessarily a material misstatement
to the 2008 financial statements when considered in isolation. The
other change reflected a $230,000 impairment charge, and represented a change in
the Company's loss. Again, while we feel the adjustment was
appropriate, it represented only 2.2% of the Company's net loss, and was not
material when considered in isolation. Therefore, we respectfully
submit that we believe that amended filings would not enhance the shareholders’
understanding of the facts and circumstances.
Our
responsibility is to provide our shareholders and other readers of our financial
data with accurate, complete and clear information regarding the operations and
financial activity of our Company. We have diligently prepared the
information presented in footnote 13 of the Form 10-K for 2009 and the Form 8-K
filed on April 16, 2010 with significant enhanced disclosure in order to
accomplish our goal. The detailed information provided in the
documents described above provide the reader with a very clear description of
the information originally submitted, along with the related facts
compared side-by-side with the restated values and the specific reasons and
affects of the restatements.
We note
further that, in management’s view, a focus point of readers of the financial
statements is the development of key technologies and future revenue streams
anticipated to be derived from those technologies, as opposed to current sales
or gross profits. As the changes to the 2008 financial results have been
comprehensively disclosed in the April 16 Form 8-K and the 2009 Form 10-K, we
believe that shareholders and other readers of the financial statements would
not derive any discernible additional value from updating the filings for prior
reporting periods.
4. We
have reviewed your response to our prior comment number 4. Your
response is unclear to us. That is, you reference your Form
10-K filed on April 15, 2010, which is for the year ended December 31,
2009. However, in your Form 10-K for the year ended December 31,
2008, and the Form’s 10-Q for the quarterly periods ended March 31, 2009, June
31, 2009, and September 30, 2009, the existing disclosures indicate that
management has concluded that the Company’s disclosure controls and procedures
are effective. Therefore, we repeat our prior comment to amend the
respective filings to describe the effect of the restatement on the officers’
conclusions regarding the effectiveness of the Company’s disclosure controls and
procedures. See Item 307 of Regulation S-K. If the
officers conclude that the disclosure controls and procedures were effective,
despite the restatement, describe the basis for the officers’
conclusions.
The
primary consideration related to the Company’s disclosure controls and
procedures relates to the reporting of certain sales as “gross revenue” vs “net”
as previously discussed in great detail. Based on the lack of
materiality with respect to the amounts discussed in item 3 above, we believe
that we did not have a material weakness in
2008. Therefore, we respectfully submit that we believe
that amended filings would not enhance the shareholders’ understanding of the
facts and circumstances, as the adjustments and resulting conclusions regarding
the effectiveness of the Company’s disclosure controls and procedures have been
fully disclosed and reported in both of the Company’s most recent corporate
filings – the December 31, 2009 10-K and the March 31, 2010 10-Q.
The issue
of the officers’ conclusions regarding the effectiveness of the Company’s
disclosure controls and procedures was addressed in Item 9A(T) of the Company’s
Form 10-K filed on April 15, 2010 and the discussions presented
above.
Statements
as required by the SEC:
As requested in your April 21, 2010
letter, the Company acknowledges that:
|
|
-
|
the
Company is responsible for the adequacy and accuracy of the disclosure in
the filing;
|
|
|
-
|
staff
comments or changes to disclosure in response to staff comments do not
foreclose the Commission from taking any action with respect to the
filing; and
|
|
|
-
|
the
Company may not assert staff comments as a defense in any proceeding
initiated by the Commission or any person under the federal securities
laws of the United States.
|
Please do
not hesitate to contact me if you have further questions or
comments.
Respectfully
submitted,
| |
/s/Thaddeus
J. Shalek
Thaddeus
J. Shalek
Interim
Chief Financial Officer
Smart
Online, Inc.
|
Mr. C. James Meese, Jr.
Ms. Michelle Thompson
Adam Stein, Esq.