International Financial Reporting Standards, commonly called IFRS, are accounting standards issued by the IFRS Foundation and the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB). They constitute a standardised way of describing the company's financial performance and position so that company financial statements are understandable and comparable across international boundaries. They are particularly relevant for companies with shares or securities publicly listed.
Financial statements are formal records of the financial activities and position of a business, person, or other entity.
In financial accounting, a balance sheet is a summary of the financial balances of an individual or organization, whether it be a sole proprietorship, a business partnership, a corporation, private limited company or other organization such as government or not-for-profit entity. Assets, liabilities and ownership equity are listed as of a specific date, such as the end of its financial year. A balance sheet is often described as a "snapshot of a company's financial condition". It is the summary of each and every financial statement of an organization.
The historical cost of an asset at the time it is acquired or created is the value of the costs incurred in acquiring or creating the asset, comprising the consideration paid to acquire or create the asset plus transaction costs. Historical cost accounting involves reporting assets and liabilities at their historical costs, which are not updated for changes in the items' values. Consequently, the amounts reported for these balance sheet items often differ from their current economic or market values.
Generally Accepted Accounting Principles is the accounting standard adopted by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and is the default accounting standard used by companies based in the United States.
An income statement or profit and loss account is one of the financial statements of a company and shows the company's revenues and expenses during a particular period.
Financial accounting is a branch of accounting concerned with the summary, analysis and reporting of financial transactions related to a business. This involves the preparation of financial statements available for public use. Stockholders, suppliers, banks, employees, government agencies, business owners, and other stakeholders are examples of people interested in receiving such information for decision making purposes.
XBRL is a freely available and global framework for exchanging business information. XBRL allows the expression of semantic meaning commonly required in business reporting. The standard was originally based on XML, but now additionally supports reports in JSON and CSV formats, as well as the original XML-based syntax. XBRL is also increasingly used in its Inline XBRL variant, which embeds XBRL tags into an HTML document. One common use of XBRL is the exchange of financial information, such as in a company's annual financial report. The XBRL standard is developed and published by XBRL International, Inc. (XII).
A fixed asset, also known as long-lived assets or property, plant and equipment (PP&E), is a term used in accounting for assets and property that may not easily be converted into cash. Fixed assets are different from current assets, such as cash or bank accounts, because the latter are liquid assets. In most cases, only tangible assets are referred to as fixed.
A chart of accounts (COA) is a list of financial accounts set up, usually by an accountant, for an organization, and available for use by the bookkeeper for recording transactions in the organization's general ledger. Accounts may be added to the chart of accounts as needed; they would not generally be removed, especially if any transaction had been posted to the account or if there is a non-zero balance.
A company's tax expense, or tax charge, is the income before tax multiplied by the appropriate tax rate. Generally, companies report income before tax to their shareholder under generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP). However, companies report income before tax to their government under tax law.
Materiality is a concept or convention within auditing and accounting relating to the importance/significance of an amount, transaction, or discrepancy. The objective of an audit of financial statements is to enable the auditor to express an opinion on whether the financial statements are prepared, in all material respects, in conformity with an identified financial reporting framework, such as the Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) which is the accounting standard adopted by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
In financial accounting under International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS), a provision is an account that records a present liability of an entity. The recording of the liability in the entity's balance sheet is matched to an appropriate expense account on the entity's income statement. In U.S. Generally Accepted Accounting Principles, a provision is an expense. Thus, "Provision for Income Taxes" is an expense in U.S. GAAP but a liability in IFRS.
Accounting software is a computer program that maintains account books on computers, including recording transactions and account balances. It may depends on virtual thinking. Depending on the purpose, the software can manage budgets, perform accounting tasks for multiple currencies, perform payroll and customer relationship management, and prepare financial reporting. Work to have accounting functions be implemented on computers goes back to the earliest days of electronic data processing. Over time, accounting software has revolutionized from supporting basic accounting operations to performing real-time accounting and supporting financial processing and reporting. Cloud accounting software was first introduced in 2011, and it allowed the performance of all accounting functions through the internet.
In financial accounting, an asset is any resource owned or controlled by a business or an economic entity. It is anything that can be used to produce positive economic value. Assets represent value of ownership that can be converted into cash . The balance sheet of a firm records the monetary value of the assets owned by that firm. It covers money and other valuables belonging to an individual or to a business.
The XBRL Global Ledger Taxonomy Framework is a holistic and generic XML and XBRL-based representation of the detailed data that can be found in accounting and operational systems, and is meant to be the bridge from transactional standards to reporting standards, integrating the Business Reporting Supply Chain.
Russian Accounting Standards, also called Russian Accounting Principles (RAP) or Russian GAAP, refer to the body of regulatory documents concerning financial accounting and reporting standards in the Russian Federation.
The SIE format is an open standard for transferring accounting data between different software produced by different software suppliers.
SAF-T is an international standard for electronic exchange of reliable accounting data from organizations to a national tax authority or external auditors. The standard is defined by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). The file requirements are expressed using XML, but the OECD does not impose any particular file format, recommending that "It is entirely a matter for revenue bodies to develop their policies for implementation of SAF-T, including its representation in XML. However, revenue bodies should consider data formats that permit audit automation today while minimising potential costs to all stakeholders when moving to new global open standards for business and financial data such as XBRL, and XBRL- GL in particular."
The accounting profession in Luxembourg is structured around Ordre des Experts-Comptables (OEC) which serves as the main accounting body in the country. Luxembourg accounting standards are inspired from neighbouring France and Belgium. Similar to France, Luxembourg has set up a Commissions des Normes Comptables (CNC) which serves as an advisor to the Ministry for Justice in respect of accounting related matters, e.g. waivers for presenting consolidated accounts.
