The Business Model Within The Annual Report

Financial accounting statements can help a user to make future decisions by showing the concerned business’s health. It shows where money is being generated, spent and lost, depicting the financial performance and financial position. The statements can also help in situations such as raising fresh capital in the form of a loan, e.g. a bank will most likely require these statements to show the business’s credibility or worthiness. The statements help influence managerial decisions on which direction the business needs to head, and how to best maximize profit.

Proper revenue recognition is important in because it has a direct impact on quarterly income statements, incentive calculations, investor confidence, and perception of an organizations financial health. The scandals at Enron and WorldCom illustrate how important properly recognize revenue is to the financial integrity of a company and how abuse can be extremely dangerous. (Labaton, 2006) To maintain consistency across organizations, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) relies on the standards published by the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) to establish the guidelines for revenue recognition. (FASB, 2011)

Furthermore, the financial statements provide the basis for measurement that is generally acceptable by the different users. This means objectivity is important when preparing the financial statements because all transactions are based upon a factual occurrence.

Revenue recognition is an important concept in accounting because it’s used to determine the company’s value, which affects major decisions of investors and management. As well as this, a coherent standard is important as it provides consistency, addresses particular issues and allow for uniform interpretation.

An ongoing concern in financial reporting is the usefulness and reliability of information provided by corporations. The financial accounting standard board defines usefulness as the information that is useful for the users in decision making (FASB, 2011). Reliability is inferred when the information is verified, objective, and can be relied on. Therefore, Statement of Financial Accounting Standards No. 157 standardizes the valuation and disclosure of fair value for assets and liabilities in order to achieve both usefulness and reliability. The reasoning for the hierarchy was due to the inconsistency in previous definitions and guidance (FASB, 1992).

Understanding of the information contained in the financial statements is necessary because of its significance to the users. If the accounting dealing concerned and disclosures associated aspects of presentation is very complicated for the user to understand despite the presence of sufficient knowledge of the entity and accounting in general, this would undermine the credibility of the whole financial statements because the forced users to base economic decisions on a non-reliable information (understandability,

Among the tools required for every business to survive and thrive, the ability to maintain a regular self-examination holds an indispensable place. The size of the business in question is almost of no consequence, only the potential complexity of the self-examination changes. A prime tool for such self-examinations is the family of related financial reporting that has become nearly universal in western businesses: the income statement, the balance sheet, and the statement of cash flows. This trio of reports enables management and owners to carefully examine the holdings and liabilities of their business so they may make

Another critical requirement for users of financial statements is information, this is addressed through the disclosure of certain principles, policies and procedures to facilitate decision making, which current standards don’t adequately address, hence the issuing of AASB 15. (AASB,2014) Accordingly, a new standard is required to rectify the inconsistencies of revenue recognition and address the lack of consistent and useful information.

Revenue recognition issues are the subjects of headlines in our daily newspapers, primarily because major corporations have recognized revenues that did not meet its revenue recognition rule. For businesses that use cash basis accounting, revenue recognition is a simple process; a sale equals revenue, but not for companies that use accrual basis accounting.  The more complex the business, the more specialized the industry, the more difficult the decision becomes for that business as to when to recognize earnings. Revenue recognition is one of the areas where managers can exercise their accounting discretion to achieve certain objectives. By looking at

INDIVIDUAL APPROACH OF THREE MODELS OF BUSINESS ANALYSIS IN INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS THROUGH THE STRTEGIC ANALYSIS OF STARBUCKS, UNITED PARCEL SERVICE Inc. (UPS), FEDERAL EXPRESS (FedEx)

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

A good example is a children?s clothing store. They must be able to understand what has made their competitors like Carter?s and

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.

Comparability allows users to compare similar companies in the same industry group and to make comparisons of performance over time. Reliability of information is truthful, accurate, and complete, capable of verification (e.g., by a potential investor) with nothing significant missed. Objectivity of accounting information is not biased toward a particular user group or investment at stake.

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).