IFRS-reporting: practical aspects of transition

Abstract

Introduction. Currently, the adoption of IFRS has become both an objective reality and a legal requirement for many domestic enterprises. International standards are a prerequisite for the formation of common approaches and objectives of financial statements, IFRS are focused on the presentation of real and objective accounting and reporting information about the financial position, as well as allow an impartial assessment of the opportunities and prospects of the enterprise. However, the implementation of IFRS requires amendments to the applicable regulations, national standards, clarification of terminology, development of practical recommendations, definition of tools and timing of the transition. As a significant expansion of the IFRS reporting segment is underway in Ukraine, new challenges, tasks, risks for practitioners and the professional accounting community are emerging.
Purpose. The purpose of the article is to study the issues, practical aspects and methods of transition to the International Financial Reporting Standards, taking into account the requirements and changes of the current legislation, research of the categories, composition and structure of IFRS reporting.
Methods. The methodological and informational basis of the research are regulations, scientific works, periodicals, open data from the Internet. Methods based on general and specific approaches to the study of economic phenomena, facts and processes were applied in the study, in particular: the dialectical cognition method (when summarizing the factors influencing the formation of IFRS financial statements), inductive (to transit from empirical data to practical use of IFRS requirements for systematic reporting, generalizations and conclusions that give an overview of the issues of IFRS reporting) and deductive (in the process of theoretical comprehension of the objectivity of the transition to IFRSs and obtaining partial conclusions to address the practical problems of such transition).
Results. As a result of the study, the authors outlined the legal requirements for the content and structure of the first IFRS financial statements and their impact on the consistency and order of IFRS reporting; the practical stages of transition to IFRS have been identified and characterized; parallel accounting, translation and transformation have been described and critically evaluated as methods of financial reporting in the transition to IFRSs. It is emphasized that the transition to IFRS is not only associated with technical difficulties, but also complicates the organization of accounting services at the enterprise and influences management processes that rely on accounting reports and indicators. The problems of hiring qualified personnel, accountants training or involvement of outsourcing consultancies are considered. Recent developments concerning the Financial Reporting System (FRS) in electronic format on the XBRL standard for entities transitioning to IFRS have been analyzed.
Discussion. Further research should be performed on the basis of domestic and international experience, taking into account the impact of IFRS implementation synergistic effect for different categories of businesses, and issues of practical implementation of financial reporting systems (FRS) in electronic format on the XBRL standard.