Wiley Interpretation and Application of IFRS Standards

3Presentation of Financial Statements

1. Introduction
2. Scope
3. Definitions of Terms
4. Financial Statements
   1. Objective
   2. Purpose of Financial Statements
5. General Features
   1. Fair Presentation and Compliance with IFRSs
      1. Going Concern
      2. Accrual Basis of Accounting
      3. Materiality and Aggregation
      4. Offsetting
      5. Frequency of Reporting
      6. Comparative Information
      7. Consistency of Presentation
6. Structure and Content
   1. Complete Set of Financial Statements
      1. Notes
      2. Statement of Compliance with IFRS
      3. Accounting Policies
      4. Fairness Exception Under IAS 1
      5. Other Disclosures Required by IAS 1
7. Future Developments
8. Illustrative Financial Statements
9. US GAAP Comparison

Introduction

As set out in IASB's Conceptual Framework for Financial Reporting 2010, the objective of general-purpose financial reporting is to provide financial information about the reporting entity, which is useful to existing and potential investors, lenders and other creditors in making decisions about providing resources to the entity. Although financial statements prepared for this purpose meet the needs of these specific users, they do not provide all the information which the users may need in order to make economic decisions since they largely portray the financial effects of past events and do not necessarily provide non-financial information.

In the past, many considered the lack of guidance on the presentation of the financial statements under IFRS to be a significant impediment to the achievement of comparability among financial statements. Users previously ...