"The principle of historical cost is still used in accounting when there is a large measure of agreement that it is inappropriate." Discuss.

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Penman (2007) had stated that historical cost may provide useful margins on turnover for forecasting operating cash flows in a going concern business. On the other hand, when valuing a portfolio of marketable investments with fair value, it tends to be more reliable. Stakeholder of Woolworths includes investors, creditors, lenders and so forth, their needs of accounting information are different. Some of the investors are interested in the information using fair value approach for them to decide whether to buy or sell their shares, some of the lenders and creditors are interested in the current value of assets and liabilities of the entity to decide the ability of the entity to pay off a debt when due. Further, a particular stakeholder need more than one measurement approach to satisfy their needs of accounting information (e.g. considering to engage with Woolworths). Therefore, mixed measurement approach would be more appropriate to satisfy each stakeholder needs of accounting information (Rankin et al., 2012; Dvorakova, D., 2011).

Auditing financial statements whose items are based on fair values are difficult because these values are often determined using assumptions which are subjective.

In our presentation, we want to discuss how fair value accounting affects society in businesses. One example of how this effected society as a whole was the 2008 financial crisis. In this financial crisis, many companies were impacted but in particular AID insurance company faced a 11 billion dollar write down of debt before FASB introduced their new guidelines of SFAS 157. If this happened after these guidelines were passed, this company would have had a loss more like 900 million dollars. As a result, a company with trillion dollars of assets reported unrealized losses of tens of billions. Another area that was impacted was the American Banking

The changing nature of business from cost-bases assets and liabilities to more market-oriented assets and liabilities drove the move towards increasing use of fair value accounting. Under the momentum, a measure like net income

Correct valuation of real assets can present challenges to financial analysts. Different models can be used to arrive at the closest estimate of value and yet certain issues will always arise.

Over the past several years, there has been a growing controversy over the accounting issues of fair values and historical cost. The basis of this controversy revolves around which one of these principles is the most accurate. There are many different viewpoints on this issue. Many accounting professionals believe that fair value is just as accurate as the historical cost principle, while others believe that the historical cost is more reliable. The facts about each of these valuation methods will be researched and explained throughout this research document, as well as the different viewpoint about which method is the most accurate and reliable.

Financial world is at the pace when the accountants are moving their steps towards fair value accounting, moreover FASB and IASB is motivating accountants to increase the use of fair value accounting by establishing new rules. Most of the people concur that fair values are the most reliable measure for financial assets and liabilities that an entity strongly trades, on the other hand some believes if management wants to hold an asset or liability till their maturity then historical method is best for measuring financial assets.

Cost Accounting: Its role and ethical considerations Introduction: Accounting is the process of identifying, measuring, and communicating economic information about an entity for the purpose of making decisions and informed judgements. The major areas of within the accounting are: Financial Accounting, Managerial Accounting/Cost Accounting and Auditing- Public Accounting Managerial accounting is concerned with the use of economic and financial information to plan and control the activities of an entity and to support the management in planning and decision-making process. Cost accounting is the subset of managerial accounting and it helps management in determination and accumulation of product, process or service cost.

One explanation of why firms might choose to put into practice conservative accounting practices lies in efficient contracting theory, for example, conservative accounting can be used as part of a firms strategy to ease the conflicts that arise among the many claimants of a firm’s net assets. This is because conservative accounting methods place restrictions on the distribution of those net assets thereby limiting the scope for self-serving opportunistic behavior. Conservative accounting can also help in bringing into line the interests of managers and shareholders through its impact on accounting earnings measures that are regularly used in management compensation contracts (Iyengar & Zampelli, 2010).

1 The system of the market is not perfect enough. For the lack of effective management of listed companies, the false accounting information disclosure, application of fair value is facing high risk. The government's intervention on the market also is relatively common, causing the price of resources often deviate from the market. Market information can't fully reflect the real

The methods for valuing companies can be classified in six groups: MAIN VALUATION METHODS BALANCE INCOME MIXED CASH FLOW VALUE OPTIONS SHEET STATEMENT (GOODWILL) DISCOUNTING CREATION .Book value . Multiples Classic Equity cash flow EVA Black and .Adjusted .PER Union of Dividends Economic Scholes . Sales Free cash flow Investment value European profit .Liquidation .P/E EBITDA Accounting Capital cash flow Cash value option value .Other Experts APV added Expand .Substantial multiples Abbreviated CFROI the project value income Delay the others investment Alternative uses 2.1 Balance sheets – Based methods (shareholders’Equity) These methods seek to determine the company’s value by estimating the value of its assets. These are traditionally used methods that consider that a company’s value lies basically in its balance sheet. They determine the value from a static viewpoint, which, therefore, does not take into account the company’s possible future evolution or money’s temporary value. Neither do they take into account other factors that also affect the value such as: the industry’s current situation, human resources or organization problems, contracts, etc. that do not appear in the accounting statements. Some of these methods are the following: Book value, adjusted book value,

3. The actual information needed by the management, investors, creditors etc. may be current values of assets therefore values based upon historical cost may not be useful for their purposes.

The use of historical cost over fair value measurements creates a major difference between FRF for SMEs and other frameworks. Under the historical cost method, the entity recognizes transactions and events at the amount of cash or cash equivalents paid or received when the transaction took place. The method

(BESSONG, 2012) Study the importance of historical value and fair value cost accounting on reported profit. The study discussed how fair value accounting and historical cost accounting will have effect on the reported profit. However it is said that key objective of any business is to earn profit and it is also equally important to report the profit. Especially it is more important to record profit carefully during inflationary period. However they have study the reported profit and effects of fair and historical value by collecting data from both primary and secondary source. Therefore it is found that historical and fair value both is equally important and both have significant effect on the reported profit. Therefore operating profit of the company is influenced by the amount that is paid for taxes, dividend and depreciation.