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Comparing Ifrs to Gaap Essay

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In the world of business records must be kept on how money is being utilized within a company whether it be private or public. IFRS and GAAP are two major accounting instruments that play a huge role in the accounting industry. IFRS stands for International Financial Reporting Standards. IFRS defines the accounting standards that are developed and approved by an independent, not-for-profit organization called the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB). The IASB is a private sector that was established in the year of 2011 and currently has 16 members. While GAAP, Generally Accepted Accounting Principles, is a combination of authoritative standards and simply the commonly accepted ways of recording and reporting accounting information. Both remain of high importance and hold differences as to why they are each valuable to the accounting process.
STATEMENT OF FINANCIAL
The format of a statement of financial or position under IFRS often differs from a balance sheet presented under Generally Accepted Accounting Principals. (Wiley, 2015, "The Accounting Information System") The reason being is that GAAP requires that the assets be listed in order depending of the measurement of liquidity. It is mandatory that GAAP's particular accounts be listed in a specific order depending on its hierarchy. The shareholders equity will be the last item recorded. In order to make things easier when recording future reports, cash must always be listed first. By listing the cash first, it will be considered the highest asset. On the other hand, IFRS does not give a specific order for the statement of financial position. Most companies today just report their assets in reverse order based off their liquidity and will most likely list the long term assets first.
FINANCIAL REPORTING Taking a closer look into the comparison of reporting standards, the IFRS and GAAP conceptual

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