Are you up to date with recent changes to your financial reporting requirements?

As part of Grant Thornton’s commitment to help you to keep up to date with changes in the financial reporting world, we publish a number of regular updates and guides. For your information, here is a summary of the publications that have been recently released.

IFRS News

• December 2009 issue – a special edition which discusses the provisions of IFRS 9 (AASB 9) including its effective date and the advantages and disadvantages of early adoption
• January 2010 issue – the quarterly update produced by our International IFRS team to ensure that you are kept up to date on financial reporting activity in the international arena which generally has a flow-on effect in Australia

Accounting guides

• Deferred tax: A Chief Financial Officer’s guide to avoiding the pitfalls – this is a detailed guide to allow CFO’s to gain a better understanding of the deferred tax approach under IAS 12 (AASB 112) and includes a number of illustrative examples

Example financial statements

• Illustrative financial statements for the year ended 31 December 2009 – this document shows financial statements prepared under IFRS, including the adoption of IFRS 8 and IAS 1
• Illustrative financial statements for a first time adopter of IFRS – this publication has recently been updated and shows the disclosures required for an entity adopting IFRS for the first time.  In the Australian context, this could be, for example, when an entity moves from being a non-reporting to a reporting entity

Technical Accounting (TA) alerts

These short newsletters provide information about new standards or current hot topic issues. Some recent editions are:

• TA alert 2010 – 01 – Application of new IFRSs issued after the reporting date – covers the situation where an accounting standard has been issued after the entity’s reporting date and an entity wishes to adopt the standard in the previous financial year
• TA alert 2010 – 02 – Common control business combinations – the scope of IFRS 3 (AASB 3) does not include accounting for business combinations under common control – this alert provides guidance regarding the two options available in accounting for these transactions
• TA alert 2010-03 – Pre-opening operating lease expenses – this alert provides details on how to account for operating lease expenses which have been incurred prior to using the leased asset
• TA alert 2010-04 - Improving disclosures about financial instruments – amendments to IFRS 7 – this alert provides details about the additional disclosures required under IFRS 7 (AASB 7) including the fair value hierarchy
• TA alert 2010-05 – ASIC’s financial statement reviews – this alert provides information relating to ASIC’s review of financial statements and areas of focus they have identified for 31 December 2009 year ends

All these publications are available on Grant Thornton’s website, by clicking the links above. If you would like more information on how the issues discussed in any of these publications effect your specific business situation, contact your usual Grant Thornton advisor or a member of the National Audit Support team at nas@grantthornton.com.au