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According to available official data, in 2015 the introduction of such regulations as special categories will become mandatory. Most often you can find the abbreviation of this concept - IFRS.

• stock market professional participants;
• commodity exchanges;
• non-state pension funds;
• clearing companies;
• joint stock investment funds;
• management organizations of the above categories.

It makes sense to first decide on the question: “IFRS - what is it?” This concept is deciphered as a complex of specialized documents, or rather standards, through which the procedure for creating financial statements that are freely available to external users is regulated.

IFRS versus the Russian accounting system

First of all, there is a difference in the end users of information, which includes relevant accounting indicators grouped according to the above standards. In particular, the Russian model was aimed at government agencies and statistics, and the international one at investors, enterprises and financial institutions. As a result, the associated differences in interests and needs for financial information also reveal different principles on which the procedure for generating this reporting is based.

Thus, a mandatory rule in IFRS is the priority of content regarding the form of presentation of previously specified information. When talking about the Russian accounting system, this point is most often omitted.

A practical example would be a situation in which PBU considers part of the capital of an enterprise, although regarding their economic nature there are very few distinctive features from bonds. Under IFRS, these features are significant enough not to be included in equity.

The purpose of introducing IFRS to Russian enterprises

In order to create something that is adequately perceived and understandable to users in different countries, international standards were introduced. Their goal is to unify the preparation of the set of documents under consideration and provide data on the activities of a company.

It is worth highlighting the list of documents defining IFRS aimed at their unification regarding the order of creation, namely:

• balance sheet;
• Report on ;
• Profits and Losses Report;
• report on changes in capital or other transactions in this area;
• accounting policy.

Along with the above reports, enterprises can also generate certain reviews for the management team, which display the profit indicators of a given company.

IFRS - what is it?

This accounting system looks like a specific set of documents, including the following elements:

• preface to the provisions of the standards under consideration;
• clarification of the fundamental principles of preparation and form of presentation of this type of reporting, in essence the concept of IFRS;
• standards and corresponding interpretations to these documents.

Each of the above documents has its own significance, but is used exclusively in conjunction with other elements. Thus, from the previously indicated list it means that IFRS are standards, each of which has a clearly established structure.

The semantic aspect of the standards of the accounting system under consideration

They establish rules that determine the procedure for deciphering individual transactions performed in the course of carrying out the core activities of the enterprise and reflected in the financial statements.

It is important to note that the standards adopted by the relevant body before 2001 are called International Accounting Standards or abbreviated IAS, and then, since 2001, International Financial Reporting Standards, the abbreviation of which has the same spelling - IFRS.

Current above standards

The main IFRSs developed before 2001 include:

International Financial Reporting Standards

The list of standards of the accounting system under consideration, adopted since 2001, is as follows:

1. “Adoption of International Financial Reporting Standards for the first time” (IFRS No. 1).
2. “Share-based payments” (IFRS No. 2).
3. Business Combinations (IFRS No. 3).
4. “Insurance Contracts” (IFRS No. 4).
5. “Non-current assets held for sale and discontinued operations” (IFRS No. 5).
6. "Exploration and Evaluation of Mineral Resources" (IFRS No. 6).

What is the significance of the current year regarding the accounting system in question?

From official sources it became known that the last volume of IFRS 2014, called the “Red Book,” is ready. It contains rules for international accounting, including those that will come into force after January 1 of the current year. An example is the amendments to the ninth standard, called “Financial Instruments,” adopted in 2001. There are also two sets of annual changes regarding IFRS 2011-2013 and IFRS 2010-2012, one interpretation of fees, the constitution of the IFRS Foundation, and a detailed work plan.

What's good about this accounting system?

In order to create a financial report that is correct by international standards, IFRS will be indispensable in helping.

It is worth highlighting a number of advantages of this accounting system, which may be associated with the activities of the following entities:

1. investors, as this is due to clarity, transparency, reliability and lower costs.
2. Companies, because the costs of activities to attract investment are reduced, there is a unified accounting system, there is no need to harmonize financial information, there is order in both internal and external accounting.
3. Auditors: due to the fact that there is uniformity in the fundamentals, there is an opportunity to participate in the adoption of relevant standards, large-scale trainings are conducted.
4. The developers of these standards themselves - due to the fact that this is an excellent opportunity to exchange experience, the basis for future national standards and the convergence of existing ones.

All of the above helps once again to get an answer to the question: “IFRS - what is it?”

How to smooth the process of transition to IFRS?

The reform objectives include the following:

1. Special training of accountants to the level of professional knowledge of the basics of the accounting system in question.
2. Strengthening in the minds of enterprise managers a real interest in providing truthful and objective information.
3. The final differentiation of accounting into tax, financial and management.

The importance of the transition is determined by the fact that IFRS are standards that are a compromise between the world's main accounting systems.

The appeal of accounting reform to businesses around the world

The IFRS financial statements under consideration can make it easier for companies from different countries to enter world-class capital markets, and will also increase the comparability of information and make it more transparent for external users.

Specifically, Russian enterprises will be able to speak the same language with their foreign colleagues and strengthen their business position in foreign markets from the point of view of equality of opportunity, as a result of which multiple prospects of international capital markets will become available.

The implementation of IFRS will have a positive impact on quality, in particular on its improvement, and will also contribute to updating information systems and motivating staff.

In addition, attracting foreign capital without reporting prepared in accordance with IFRS is currently very difficult. And it doesn’t matter whether this will be done either with the help of Western banks, or by entering the stock market located abroad, or by attracting private investment from abroad. A potential foreign investor will most likely not understand reporting prepared in accordance with PBU. Therefore, it is worth taking care of generating reporting regulated by IFRS.

Companies are aware of the fact that in the near future, international standards will become national. For many firms, IFRS reporting is already required today in order to secure a significant competitive advantage by attracting resources in international borrowing markets such as bonds, loans or IPOs.

Thus, all of the above helps to understand in more detail the question: “IFRS - what is it?”

1. International financial reporting standards: essence and meaning

2. International financial reporting standards: structure, hierarchy, content, application procedure

1. International financial reporting standards: essence and meaning

International Financial Reporting Standards(IFRS) are a system of generally accepted requirements, principles, rules and procedures that define a general approach to the preparation of financial statements that are useful to a wide range of interested users, and establish uniform requirements for the recognition, measurement and disclosure of financial and business transactions.

Historically, each country created its own accounting and reporting standards that met, first of all, the reporting requirements of its main users.

Development of international trade, the emergence of multinational companies, capital market globalization, the globalization of economic processes and information technologies has created a need for harmonization of financial reporting of companies from different countries. This was due to the need to obtain and provide transparent, useful, informative, comparable, homogeneous financial information understandable to a wide range of interested users. It was for this purpose that it was decided to develop international standards for financial accounting and reporting, which were supposed to provide a unified methodological basis and establish basic accounting principles in accordance with which enterprises could conduct financial accounting.

To date Financial statements prepared under either IFRS or US GAAP are internationally recognized, since only statements prepared according to these standards are recognized by the majority of stock exchanges in the world: US GAAP for American ones, IFRS for non-American ones. In this regard, depending on which exchange the company wants to enter the quotation list, the appropriate accounting model is selected.

Development and use of IAS and IFRS in practice:

Allows for a unified approach to the generation of high-quality, transparent, comparable and reliable reporting in different countries;

They help investors and shareholders from different countries to better analyze the reporting of potential recipients of investments (again from different countries), prepared according to common principles, and therefore comparable;

They allow companies entering stock exchanges in different countries to prepare not several sets of financial statements (separately for each national exchange), but a single set of them for all exchanges, i.e. reduce the cost of attracting capital ;

They improve the overall management culture within transnational corporations, improve their internal control system and audit .

2. International financial reporting standards: structure, hierarchy, content, application procedure

IFRS are a set of interrelated documents that include:

Preface to IFRS provisions;

Conceptual Framework or Principles for the Preparation and Presentation of Financial Statements;

Actually standards;

Clarifications to standards or interpretations.

They all form a single system and cannot be used separately; however, each document as an element of the system has a specific purpose.

The Preface briefly sets out the objectives and activities of the IFRS Board (Committee), and also explains how IFRS is developed and applied.

Conceptual framework defines procedure for preparing and presenting financial statements for external users. It discusses issues such as the objectives of financial reporting, the underlying assumptions and qualitative characteristics that determine the usefulness of the reporting information, and provides definitions, recognition and measurement of the elements of financial statements. They are not standards in themselves. The conceptual framework serves as the basis for developing the provisions of the standards, determines the approach to the preparation and presentation of financial statements and determines the possibility of using professional judgment in resolving various types of issues.

Actually International financial reporting standards are provisions adopted in the public interest on the procedure for preparing and presenting financial statements for certain sections of accounting.

Explanations to IFRS are given unambiguous interpretation of unclear provisions of the standards and ensure their uniform application.

The questions for clarification are usually those related to:

Either using existing standards that are practical and of greatest interest to users,

Or arising as economic relations develop.

The international reporting standard and its mandatory annexes have the highest priority.

IFRS may be accompanied by applications that are not part of the standard:

Basis for conclusions;

Illustrative examples;

Correspondence tables (between the new and old editions of the standard);

Guidelines for implementation of the standard.

Finally, IFRS is based on the Principles for the preparation and presentation of financial statements in accordance with IFRS, which are not a standard and are not formally included in hierarchy IFRS.

A key aspect when developing new standards, interpretations and applications is their compliance with the specified Principles.

Each standard is dedicated to a specific topic and has the following structure:

Purpose - reveals accounting issues, as well as the purpose of publishing this standard;

Scope of use - defines the boundaries of the standard, indicates the conditions under which it does not apply. It may also contain information about the termination of previously published standards due to the release of new ones;

Definition - reveals the content of the main terms found in the text of the standard;

The description of the essence is the largest part, most often consisting of several sections, which outline the basic principles of solving problems;

Disclosure of information is a mandatory part of the standard, containing information that must be disclosed in the financial statements, notes to them, and accounting policies;

Effective date - indicates the date of entry into force of this standard;

Additions are an optional part that provides detailed explanations of individual clauses of the standard.

Each standard contains the following information:

Accounting object - a definition of the accounting object and the basic concepts associated with this object is provided;

Recognition of an accounting object - provides criteria for classifying accounting objects to different reporting elements;

Display in financial statements - disclosure of information about accounting objects in different forms of financial statements.

In practice, the following cases of application of IFRS are distinguished in the conditions of the current level of development and harmonization of accounting and reporting:

Use of IFRS along with national standards;

Adaptation of national standards to IFRS;

Application of IFRS as national standards.

Topic 8. International Financial Reporting Standards Board: structure, work procedure

1. International Accounting Standards Board: general information, goals and objectives

2. Structure and procedure for appointing members of the International Financial Reporting Standards Board

3. The procedure for the development and adoption of international financial reporting standards

1. International Accounting Standards Board: general information, goals and objectives

In order to create and improving single unified financial reporting standards for all countries of the world On June 29, 1973, as a result of an international agreement, an independent non-governmental organization headquartered in London was formed - the Committee on International Financial Reporting Standards (IASC) ( International Accounting Standards Committee, IASC). The Committee included representatives of the 10 largest world powers: Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, Mexico, Holland, Great Britain, Ireland and the USA.

In 2001, the Committee was transformed into the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB).

IFRS Committee or Board (IASB) is an independent, non-governmental professional organization, whose members are accounting (auditing) organizations from different countries.

The purpose of the IASB is to:

1. developing, in the public interest, a single set of high-quality, understandable (understandable) and practical global accounting standards that provide for the formation of high-quality, transparent and comparable information in financial statements in order to assist participants in global capital markets and others users of information in making economic decisions;

2. implementation, widespread dissemination of standards, monitoring their compliance and ensuring their uniform interpretation;

3. active work with bodies that set national standards to achieve convergence of these standards with IFRS in the interests of high-quality solutions to accounting problems.

Before 2000, the IASB set the goal harmonization of national accounting standards. This process involved the IASB developing high-quality solutions to accounting problems, which were then to be used as the basis for the harmonization of national standards.

The process provided for in the new Charter convergence involves the development by the IASB, together with national regulatory authorities, of solutions to accounting problems that ensure the most effective and high-quality preparation and presentation of information in financial statements.