Financial reporting is globally divided by two standards – US-GAAP and IFRS. US-GAAP is the accounting standard in US, while IFRS is the present to some 149 jurisdictions around the world. Since public companies are operating in global marketplace, convergence to a reporting standards accepted elsewhere has many advantages benefiting not only the public companies themselves, but also their overseas investments.
But first, let’s take a look on some differences of US-GAAP and IFRS on investment concepts:
| Concept | US-GAAP | IFRS |
| Based on | Rule | Principle |
| Driver for classification of Financial Assets | Legal form of the financial asset | Nature of the financial asset |
| Investment property | No specific definition | Separately defined |
| Capitalization of borrowing cost in relation to equity-method investment | May be allowed in certain circumstances | Does not allow |
| Valuation of Unlisted Equity Investment | Carried at cost, unless impaired or elected for fair value option of specific industries | At Fair Value with no industry-specific differences |
| Use of Fair Value Option for Equity-method Investments | Unrestricted | Has limits as to which entities can use it |
| Net Asset Value in Investment Company Entities | Allowed for certain investments | Does not allow |
| Impairment of Available-for-sale debt securities | Considered two steps – events affecting cash flow and entity’s intent to hold | Focus on events affecting cash flow recovery, regardless of entity’s intent |
Though these two standards may have not agreed on all concepts, still they have a common goal to create and maintain a framework on how companies should prepare and disclose their financial statements. Guided by this objective, more and more companies are now embracing their global presence.
Colombia, for instance, is one of those countries which already leaned to IFRS when it announced in 2011 its convergence plan to replace its local GAAP. And now that its five-year plan has concluded, financial reporting and analysis necessitate its full understanding. This doesn’t only mean application of its concepts to company filings, but also the translation of these financial data to efficiently benefit the global users. With the recent hype of XBRL applications, our global market is now optimistic in using interactive data which encompasses integration with the existing reporting standards such as IFRS. Don’t worry, XBRLAnalyst is always ready to support standards convergence. As a matter of fact, Colombian IFRS dataset in XBRL format is now available to our subscribers for FREE!
If you are in Colombia, you can purchase both US and Colombia data from our partner Pasos Corporativos. But for those in US or outside of Colombia, you can add and keep forever the Colombian data set for FREE if you subscribe now until June 13, 2017 promotion. For active subscription, just email [email protected] a message to “Add Colombian dataset”. Please check our knowledge base on how to access Colombian reports.
Again, now that IFRS is for free, what’s your reason for not subscribing?
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