Essay on Segmental Reporting

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

Operating Segments: Improving Disclosure From the Bottom Up. (2011, November). Retrieved January 30, 2013, from PWC: http://www.pwc.com/gx/en/audit-services/publications/corporate-reporting/investor-view/operating-segments-improving-disclosure-from-bottom-up.jhtml

Entity-wide disclosures are required under Accounting Standards Codification (ASC) 280-10-50-40 through 280-10-50-42. The disclosures are required because every corporation does not report information in a similar fashion, and the disclosures would provide comparability of the financial statements among entities. For example, if a corporation uses a geographic approach in its financial statements, disclosing certain information about the products or services sold will make comparability to other companies much easier. The disclosures will also help with comparability within an entity if they decide to choose another method of reporting operating segments in the future. There are three types of entity-wide disclosures; products and services, geographic areas, and/or major customers. Every public company has to comply with the disclosures, even if the company has one reportable segment. The only exception to the entity-wide disclosures is if it is impractical to provide the information, such as it would be extremely costly to the corporation, or if the “internal reporting systems are not capable of gathering financial information by product or service by geographic area.” A disclosure should be made when entity-wide disclosures are impractical.

A vertical and horizontal analysis of each company's balance sheet and income statement in this particular case will be enlightening. A vertical analysis will for instance shed some light on how revenue is being used. In this case, each component of the companies' financial statements will be converted into a percentage of a key component of either the balance sheet or the income statement. A special common size balance sheet and income statement will be utilized to ease comparison. The

Assignment #1 - Leon’s versus The Brick etc.) have a vested interest in understanding inherent risks of engaging in economic activities with such companies. In addition to periodic and timely filing requirements for publically traded companies, market based share price data is readily available through most online news networks or major stock exchange websites. Yet another touch point for the financial analyst to access relevant and valuable business intelligence on a timely basis.

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 memo highlights segmented reporting and the variable approach to preparing income statements. Segmental reporting is necessary since there is a need to understand the cost data for each section. Proper cost allocation is critical to preparing the income statements, while it is also easier to identify the costs that are common and not attributable to any specific segment. Typically, the management analyzes the cost behavior by making the assumption that the total costs change occur because of change in level of a single activity (Slideshare, n.d.). The variable costing

This paper will analyze these views as they apply to the discloser of segment information for public entities as required by topic 280 of the FASB accounting standards codification, and discussed in Statement of Financial Standards No. 131 (“SFAS 131). The paper is structured as follows: Section II provides an overview of the objective and general purpose of financial reporting and the qualitative characteristics off useful financial information as determined by the Financial Accounting Standards Board (“FASB”), section III introduces the concept of segment reporting and outlines the requirements for disclosures of segment information for public companies, section IV evaluates the relevance of

In order to help users of financial statements better understand the public entity 's operations and make more informed decisions about the public entity 's operating matters, publicly-held companies are required to disclose the segments and related information about the different types of activities in which the company engages and the different economic environments in which the company operates. According to FASB Accounting Standards Codification, public entity is a business entity or a not-for-profit entity that issues securities in public market or is required to files financial statements with SEC. FASB provides guidance regarding the disclosure in the notes to financial

Analysis of financial statements is necessary to understanding performance. According to Investopedia (2015), there are two methods of analysis, trend or horizontal analysis and vertical analysis. As horizontal analysis is a comparison over a period of time, vertical analysis compares items within a specific financial statement based on a total amount, such as assets or liabilities. Common size financial statements are utilized to conduct vertical analysis (Vitez, 2015). With the amount of comprehensive information available, business managers are better equipped to make

Financial statements provide documentation of a company’s financial history for a set timeframe. One of the financial statement used by investors, creditors, and mangers is the balance sheet. The second statement used by accountant’s income statement, which is also important to shareholders. The third statement is the retained earnings statement, and the fourth financial statement is the statement of cash flows. Each financial statement has a different purpose and shows different aspects of the company’s finances. However, these financial statements are integrated and work together to

There is evidence from research about the importance of this process the information that indicate the shareholder to take decisions. The following figure represents specific hypotheses about the effects of vivid information to make decisions shareholders. Which include : information focuses on the personal characteristics of the executive power in decision-making which contribute to the work and lead to increased confidence path. Also, allocate resources for the duty

It can fairly be said that an Investor considering an investment decision (whether to purchase, sell or hold stock) in publicly traded company acts on the basis of extensive information which is available by corporation to him until the last moment of his investing decision and try to determine the fair price of corporate stock. In the light of continuous creation of a particular impression of corporate affairs by the corporation, new information by corporate can vanish the importance of previous available information to investor. In the scenario only one kind of investors can get advantage over others, who is either very close to corporate operation (corporate officers) or can access nonpublic price-sensitive information to corporation

The first part of the essay will be focusing on three categories of IC. Then, it will be discussing the relationship between IC and Market-to-book ratios. Next, it will be focusing on the future benefit of voluntary disclosure.

Economic science teaches us that due to their subjective needs, individuals have subjective preferences, and hence different interest. Occasionally different subjective interests give rise to conflicts of interest between contracting partners. These conflicts of interest may result in turn, in one or both parties undertaking actions that may be against the interest of the other contracting partner. The primary reason for the divergence of objectives between managers and shareholders has been attributed to separation of ownership (shareholders) and control (management) in corporations. As a consequence, agency problems