Published Financial Statements: Users and Their Need for Accounting Information

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

Thirty years ago, most financial accounting was done manually, leading to a great deal of paperwork. Currently, most accounting information is recorded via computers and wide area networks (Journal of Accountancy, 1994a). Technology has certainly changed the face of accounting over the years. While it is unclear whether technology’s impact on accounting has been positive or negative, it is clear that technology has drastically changed the accounting profession. Often a technological advance may be an asset to a business, but a liability to the firm’s accountant. For example, information can be provided in a timely and more accurate manner, but at the price of confidentiality. Some of the impacts of technology are neither

The most important thing to any company’s stakeholders is high-quality reporting of its financial statements. Investors, for instance, need to know the truth about a company in order to make an informed decision on whether to make private investment, buy stock or bonds. However, for stakeholders to get the truth about a company, they need to read and understand management’s discussion and analysis, the president’s letter, the notes, as well as the financial statements. Conversely, financial statements must be accompanied with disclosures to prevent them from misleading the stakeholders.

This report is written as a response to the monograph in which the ICAEW published on how financial accounting disclosures can be improved. The aim of this report is to critically discuss and evaluate the worthwhileness of the recommendations made from a financial investor’s perspective. It is done by reviewing recommendations put forward by the ICAEW and analysing if each of the disclosure recommended is worth the effort while putting in perspective what effects these recommendations have on professional investors who are one of the primary users and consumers of financial statements. The report contains information mainly from the ICAEW report and the CFA institute report

Baruch Lev and Feng Gu authors of “The End of Accounting and The Path Forward for Investors and Managers” indicate that over the past 110 years, the structure and content of financial reports has not changed, and that the role that these reports play in influencing the decisions of investors has greatly diminished. Lev and Gu make a case that non-transaction events that are not captured by the financial reports such as those disclosed through 8-k filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) have a greater impact on stock prices, and thus more useful to investors. In addition, they suggest that one of reasons for the decline in usefulness of financial reports stems from the increase of estimates that has made its way into these reports (Lev and Gu 2016).

External users (shareholders, lenders, directors, customers, suppliers, regulators, lawyers, brokers, and the press) rely on financial statement analysis to make decisions in pursuing their own goals.

In October 3, 2014 the Financial Accounting Standard Board (FASB) issued proposed updates to the disclosure framework for the board decision process. This disclosure framework is meant to improve the effectiveness of disclosures in notes to financial statements. According to the disclosure framework effectiveness of the financial statements could be achieved by enhancing clarity in communication of information that is most important to users of each entity financial statements. FASB agrees that reduction in volume of the notes to financial statement is note the main objective but also does not refute the fact that concentration on the most important information in note will automatically lead to reduction in the volume of notes to financial statements (Financial Accounting Standards Board, 2014).

There are many users of accounting information who are interested in the financial statements of companies as they rely on the statements to make better financial decisions. The users can either be internal or external to the organisation. Depending on the type of business, there are sometimes different users. For example, one user of Sainsbury’s financial statement are shareholders but one user of LeSoCo’s financial statement is Board of Directors.

Each user of the financial statements interprets the information in a different manor. They use the information to determine their interactions with the organization. Management, investors, and employees use the same information from the financial statements but for different purposes. These four basic statements are the fundamentals of accounting which can be much more detail and complex. They do not need to be more complex for the users of the information; these basic statements have all the information needed to make

Educate users. It is important that users understand that the auditor’s opinion is not a 100% guarantee of the accuracy of the financial statements.

When it comes down to applying information about a company financial statement, the accountants are set too many guidelines, rules, and procedures. Everyone should first trust and have confidence that the data is set on good, steady principles. There are plenty of modern day

Most financial information is subject to some risk of being less than a faithful representation of that which it purports to portray. This is not due to bias, but rather to inherent difficulties either in identifying the transactions and other events to be measured or in devising and applying measurement and presentation techniques that can convey messages that correspond with those transactions and events. In certain cases, the measurement of the financial effects of items could be so uncertain that entities generally would not recognise them in the financial statements; for example, although most entities generate goodwill internally over time, it is usually difficult to identify or measure that goodwill reliably. In other cases, however, it may be relevant to recognise items and to disclose the risk of error surrounding their recognition and measurement.

2). Two primary users of financial statements include managers and employees. Managers use financial statements to help assess the business’ performance for a period and use this information

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’.