4 Principal of Qualitative Characteristic

In accounting there is much to be learned, about the financial aspects of a business. In the past five weeks I have learned the importance of financial reports and how they relate to the success of an establishment. These reports may include balance sheets and income statements, which help accountants and the public grasp the overall financial condition of a company. The information in these reports is really significant to, managers, owners, employees, and investors. Managers of a business can take and deduce financial

Fraser, L. M., & Ormiston, A. (201). Understanding financial statements (9th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

The purpose of this paper is to define accounting, and identify the four basic financial statements. The paper also explains how the different financial statements are interrelated to each other and why they are useful to managers, investors, creditors, and employees.

To enhance a user’s ability to understand and compare an entity’s operating results, reporting entities are required to describe all significant accounting policies in their financial statements. As such to decide if an accounting principal is significant, is the management’s decision.

As the business environment grows and companies find new ways to expand into their respective - or even new – markets, it is important that reporting standards stay up to date with changes and continue to assist companies in providing their users with useful accounting information. Information is labelled as being useful when it meets the

Representations are faithful if there is a correspondence or agreement between the accounting measures or descriptions in the financial reports and the economic phenomena they purport to represent (FASB, 1980: 6; FASB, 2005: 3). The difference between reliability and a faithful representation is ambiguous. Since the attributes neutrality, completeness and substance of economic phenomena (substance over form) can be classified as qualities of faithful representation, reliability becomes redundant. Consequently, a point of attention is to discuss what exactly the notions reliability and faithful representation mean and what they do not mean (FASB, 2005: 2-3).In both frameworks neutrality is defined as free from bias. 'To that end, the common conceptual framework should not include conservatism or prudence among the desirable qualitative characteristics of accounting information. However the framework should note the continuing need to be careful in the face of uncertainty' (FASB, 2005: 3).

The main elements of the balance sheet are assets and liabilities. Assets generally include both current assets (cash or equivalents that will be converted to cash within one year, such as accounts receivable, inventory, and prepaid expenses) and noncurrent assets (assets that are held for more than one year and are used in running the business, including fixed assets like property, plant, and equipment; long-term investments; and intangible assets like patents, copyrights, and goodwill). Both the total amount of assets and the makeup of asset accounts are of interest to financial analysts.

This essay will begin to look at the main financial statements used by decision makers in businesses today. This essay will go into detail about the income statement and statement of financial position and whether these two statements provide decision makers with their financial information adequately. This essay will also include the various advantages and disadvantages of each financial statement as well as describing whom the decision makers are and why financial statements are important to them. A conclusion will be present at the end of this essay to demonstrate an overall view of whether financial statements are beneficial to decision makers.

Accounting standard-setters have an expectation that the readers of general purpose financial reports have a ‘reasonable knowledge’ of accounting. Specifically, the IASB Framework states that ‘users are expected to have a reasonable knowledge of business and economic activities and accounting and a willingness to study the information with reasonable diligence’. Hence, there is an expectation that financial statements are not tailored to meet the needs of people who have not, in some way, studied financial accounting. Students should be encouraged to consider whether this expectation is in itself ‘reasonable’.

What a company releases or discloses on the 'face ' of its financial statements is a decision involving limitations as to the amount or extent of information to be disclosed; this also applies for notes. In the first place, a comprehensive inclusion of all economic events affecting a particular business would result in an enormous glut of unnecessary material that is likely to present a false impression of the company to the stakeholders reading the financial statements. Simultaneously, however, the professional accountant is aware

The ultimate goal of accounting is to provide useful information to those that need it (Siam, & Rashid, 2010). Financial statements analysis is very important to various users because it helps to express the overall financial health of the organization (Gibson, 2013). Managers use the financial statements to measure the profitability of a company, manage day to day activities and make important decisions about pricing, production that will benefit the organization (Gibson, 2013). Financial statements are also used to form contracts between organizations. Using the debt to equity ratio, managers are able to determine how much capital should be raised for investment. Consumers on the other hand need the financial statements to tell them the ability of the company to meet their needs. This study presents a comprehensive assessment of the balance sheet components, income statement components and the fair value accounting system.

In drawing up accounting statements, whether they are external "financial accounts" or internally-focused "management accounts", a clear objective has to be that the accounts fairly reflect the true "substance" of the business and the results of its operation.

One of the most significant purposes of General Purpose Financial Reports is providing useful and valuable accounting information, which is an important basis to making appropriate decisions for information users. The quality of accounting information is directly related to information users in decision-making and its consequences. Hence, the four qualitative characteristics, namely Understandability, Relevance, Reliability and Comparability are set out in the conceptual framework to ensure that information users can make the right decisions. This essay will definitely and intensively evaluate and examine the four qualitative characteristics of accounting information.

The objective of a general purpose financial report is to deliver financial information about the reporting entity. Decisions about equity and debt instruments depend on the returns that they expect from an investment in those instruments. To assess an entity’s prospects for future net cash inflows information is needed about several aspects of the entity including but not limiting to, resources of the entity and claims against the entity. General purpose financial reports do not provide all the information needed for users, thus this information needs to be gathered from other sources such as general economic decisions. General purpose financial reports are not intended to show the value of a reporting entity. Knowledge about the nature and amounts of a reporting entity’s economic resources is used to assist users identify strengths and weaknesses within a reporting entity. Accrual accounting is

However, to an average shareholder, it is near to impossible to understand the financial statements of a company only by looking at the financial figures to arrive at a decision to invest or take money out of the company. For such purposes, an analysis is required to understand and