International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS)

IFRS standards include many in existence for decades as well as those under development. We only operate in Canada - an IFRS country- but report only in the US. We monitor IFRS provisions and have outlines of changes needed if adopted in the US. Convergence will change both GAAP and IFRS to be far closer a match.

I was "lucky" enough to have done the conversion process both internationally and domestically. On the international side, the process was akin to Shakespeare's "Much ado about nothing". My staff and the auditors treated the process as a non-event, mostly because the entities involved had already dealt with multiple GAAP's anyway.

On the domestic side, the process was treated much like a circus. Everyone involved wanted to be "significantly involved" so they could claim it on their resumes.

The difficulty with IFRS projects (few as there are) in the U.S., is that anyone who took a 4-hour IFRS CPE class claims to be an expert and is evidenced when you see a resume from someone who has no international experience, but puts the four letters "I...F...R...S" in the summary.

My approach; I am taking the ICAEW IFRS certificate program, plus the AICPA's program to add to my experience.

J.D. Floyd

Hi Wayne.....I have been involved in helping companies transition to IFRS in Canada and also locally in U.S. for a large financial institution.

If you need to understand the impact the IFRS will have on the financials of your company, you need to first understand when you plan to convert (i.e. timing - say 2014 / 2015?) and which accounting standards will be applicable at that point in time.

In addition, you also need to be aware of the fact that there are quite a few IFRS/U.S. GAAP transition projects on the go that will change the current IFRS accounting standards and align them more closely to the future U.S. GAAP. The most notable of it is the Revenue Recognition project for which a joint exposure draft was issued by the FASB and IASB. So the idea behind the convergence is that once the final Revenue Recognition accounting standard is issued, you will more or less get to the same answer by either applying the guidance under IFRS or U.S. GAAP.

Another similar convergence project is for Leasing. There are IFRS/U.S. GAAP differences, but most, if not all these differences will disappear with the release of the new accounting standards under U.S. GAAP.

Please feel free to contact me anytime if you need any additional information on how to approach the IFRS transition process for your company or for your clients.