The purpose of financial statements is to give financial statements information about the change in financial position, financial performance and financial position of the organization. These can provide data use in decision making such as investment, credit and economic decision making which are useful for various users. There are seven main groups of users which are public, investors, lenders, employees, customers, supplies, government and other agencies and the needs of information is different for each group, for instance, employee will interest on the profitability, retirement benefits and employment opportunities and so on. Show
The qualitative characteristics can be categorized as fundamental (relevance and faithful representation) or enhancing (comparability, verifiability, timeliness and understandability) based on how they influence the usefulness of financial information. However, it can limited by two pervasive constraints which is cost and materiality in providing useful financial information. Fundamental Qualitative Characteristics of Financial Information
Application of the Fundamental Qualitative Characteristics of Financial InformationRelevance is the fundamental qualitative characteristic which connected to the economic phenomena and must be considered first before the other qualitative characteristics. Once the relevance is applied to distinguish which economic phenomena should be presented, faithful representation is going to determine which characteristics are best to correspond to the relevant phenomena. Therefore, relevance and faithful representation must work in a line to provide useful financial information to the users. Enhancing Qualitative Characteristics of Financial InformationEnhancing qualitative characteristics are additional benefit added to the fundamental to enhance the decision usefulness of financial information.
Application of the Enhancing Qualitative Characteristics of Financial InformationEnhancing qualitative characteristics provide additional benefit and usefulness in the financial reporting information. Therefore, the four important characteristics which are comparability, verifiability, timeliness and understandability should be extent widely. However, the enhancing qualitative characteristics will be useless if the financial information is irrelevant or not faithfully represented in fundamental step. The application of the enhancing qualitative characteristics is redundant process that does not follow priority and prescribed order. Sometimes, one or some of the enhancing qualitative characteristics will be given up to maximize the usefulness of another qualitative characteristic. If such situation happened, appropriate information or evidence should be disclosed. Constraints on Financial Reporting
Application of the Constraints on Financial ReportingMateriality is said to be one of the pervasive constraint on financial reporting because it attribute to all the qualitative characteristics. For example, materiality need to be measured when determine the sufficiency of relevant information and sufficiency of complete, neutral, and free from error to faithfully represent in financial reporting. Application of the cost constraint in financial reporting included evaluate whether the benefits of reporting information will be able to impose the costs. It is necessary to reflect on whether one or some qualitative characteristics one or some of the enhancing qualitative characteristics will be given up to reduce the cost. |