Industries» Retail » Corner Store» January 2010 Archive
January 4th, 2010 - IFRS Compliance
Switching to IFRS: It’s the eleventh hour
Andrea Jong, Director of Finance, Ideaca Knowledge Services
It’s only a year away: in January of 2011, Canada will join more than 100 countries from around the world in the change to International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS). IFRS will be in, and Canadian GAAP will be out for all publicly accountable enterprises.
Feeling a touch of anxiety? You’re not alone. Recent reports indicate that 8 out of 10 companies have completed less than 40% of the work required to meet the deadline. What’s more, even many of the leaders are breaking into a sweat when they think about running parallel GAAP and IFRS systems in 2010.
If you’re wondering how to move your IFRS project into high-gear, read-on for some quick tips and a number of helpful resources.
What you should be doing right now.
Assuming your accounting and finance departments have already identified the relevant differences between GAAP and IFRS, here are 3 items that should be near the top of your IT to-do list:
- Perform a Reporting Gap-Analysis. Conduct a 3-way Fit Gap review to determine the relationship between (i) information systems/reporting tools, (ii) the ability of your financial system to be configured and (iii) the IFRS standards that you are required to present.
- Review historical accounting data. IFRS compliance requires companies to recast historical data according to the new standards. The best way to do this is for your IT department to create IFRS conditioned extraction scripts to identify allowed and non-allowed transactions.
- Evaluate the potential for parallel accounting systems.Although most companies say they plan to run parallel IFRS and Canadian GAAP financial reporting systems during 2010, less than half of them have actually assessed the system requirements to accomplish this feat. And the ones that have done an assessment? Many have found it would be difficult, if not impossible to run completely in parallel. Decide what needs to be run in parallel, and what can be handled by other means.
Need Help?
Ideaca has designed and implemented IFRS comparative reporting solutions for a number of Canadian customers. We can provide the skill and expertise from both a process and a systems standpoint to help make your organization and your systems ready for IFRS.
- Assisting in implementing an affordable IFRS solution using Microsoft Dynamics AX
- Providing advice on setting up or adapting your Chart of Accounts and Fixed Assets Module to ensure easy IFRS accounting
- Working with your audit partners and internal staff to assist with necessary system changes as required for transition to IFRS
- Designing and configuring transaction processes and reports to ensure the easy preparation of comparative statements.
Looking for more information? Try these links:
IFRS Readiness in Canada: 2009
A new PricewaterhouseCoopers sponsored survey finds that for most companies, there is still a lot of work to do, and that the scope of the changes will be pervasive, affecting many aspects of business operations, systems and IFRS transition procedures.
10 Minutes on Transitioning to IFRS: Thinking about it now is a good idea.
An American PWC publication with slightly different deadlines, but still a great overview of the impact of IFRS.
KPMG's Webcast on IFRS Conversion (Dec 2009) – The impact of IFRS on systems and processes: what you need to know.
Listen to a replay of this recent webcast and take a look at the extensive IFRS coverage elsewhere on the site.
Ideaca
Additional IFRS Information from Ideaca
