International Accounting Standard 1 – IAS 1

Objective

This Standard prescribes the basis for presentation of general purpose financial statements to ensure comparability both with the entity’s financial statements of previous periods and with the financial statements of other entities. It sets out overall requirements for the presentation of financial statements, guidelines for their structure and minimum requirements for their content.

Scope

An entity shall apply this Standard in preparing and presenting general purpose financial statements in accordance with International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRSs)

Financial statements

Financial statements are a structured representation of the financial position and financial performance of an entity. The objective of financial statements is to provide information about the financial position, financial performance and cash flows of an entity that is useful to a wide range of users in making economic decisions

A complete set of financial statements comprises:

(a) a statement of financial position as at the end of the period;

(b) a statement of profit or loss and other comprehensive income for the period;

(d) a statement of cash flows for the period;

(e) notes, comprising significant accounting policies and other explanatory information;

Going concern

When preparing financial statements, management shall make an assessment of an entity’s ability to continue as a going concern.

An entity shall prepare financial statements on a going concern basis unless management either intends to liquidate the entity or to cease trading, or has no realistic alternative but to do so.

When an entity does not prepare financial statements on a going concern basis, it shall disclose that fact, together with the basis on which it prepared the financial statements and the reason why the entity is not regarded as a going concern

Accrual basis of accounting

An entity shall prepare its financial statements, except for cash flow information, using the accrual basis of accounting

Material:

Information is material if omitting, misstating or obscuring it could reasonably be expected to influence decisions that the primary users of general purpose financial statements make on the basis of those financial statements, which provide financial information about a specific reporting entity.

Materiality depends on the nature or magnitude of information, or both. An entity assesses whether information, either individually or in combination with other information, is material in the context of its financial statements taken as a whole.

Materiality and aggregation

An entity shall present separately each material class of similar items. An entity shall present separately items of a dissimilar nature or function unless they are immaterial.

Offsetting

An entity shall not offset assets and liabilities or income and expenses, unless required or permitted by an IFRS.

Frequency of reporting

An entity shall present a complete set of financial statements (including comparative information) at least annually. When an entity changes the end of its reporting period and presents financial statements for a period longer or shorter than one year, an entity shall disclose, in addition to the period covered by the financial statements:

(a) the reason for using a longer or shorter period, and

(b) the fact that amounts presented in the financial statements are not entirely comparable.

Comparative information

Except when IFRSs permit or require otherwise, an entity shall present comparative information in respect of the preceding period for all amounts reported in the current period’s financial statements. An entity shall include comparative information for narrative and descriptive information if it is relevant to understanding the current period’s financial statements.

An entity shall present, as a minimum, two statements of financial position, two statements of profit or loss and other comprehensive income, two separate statements of profit or loss (if presented), two statements of cash flows and two statements of changes in equity, and related notes.

Change in accounting policy, retrospective restatement or reclassification

An entity shall present a third statement of financial position as at the beginning of the preceding period in addition to the minimum comparative financial statements if:

(a) it applies an accounting policy retrospectively, makes a retrospective restatement of items in its financial statements or reclassifies items in its financial statements; and

(b) the retrospective application, retrospective restatement or the reclassification has a material effect on the information in the statement of financial position at the beginning of the preceding period

Consistency of presentation

An entity shall retain the presentation and classification of items in the financial statements from one period to the next unless:

(a) it is apparent, following a significant change in the nature of the entity’s operations or a review of its financial statements, that another presentation or classification would be more appropriate

having regard to the criteria for the selection and application of accounting policies in IAS 8; or

(b) an IFRS requires a change in presentation.