Accounting and Auditing Research and Databases: Practitioner's Desk Reference

Locating U.S. GAAP

The Codification is the major source for finding essential U.S. GAAP authorities. As previously discussed, the Codification includes all authoritative U.S. GAAP. For example, it incorporates the principles from FASB Statements and Interpretations and the predecessor AICPA ARBs and APBOs, FASB Technical Bulletins, AICPA SOPs that are cleared by the FASB, Abstracts of EITF Statements, FASB Staff Positions, and limited AICPA Audit and Accounting Guidance.

A mixture of authoritative and nonauthoritative U.S. GAAP authorities is located in the AICPA Online Professional Library database discussed in Chapter 6. For instance, the full AICPA Industry and Audit Guides and the AICPA SOPs are available from the AICPA Online Professional Library database. These guides are more fully discussed in the text concerning the auditing authorities. Similarly, the researcher can use the Codification or AICPA Online Professional Library database to access the AICPA Practice Bulletins. Industry practices that are widely recognized and prevalent in the industry are left to the individual accountant's analysis, which one should document by using some of the accounting and business databases described in Chapter 4.