Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Steven M. Bragg, CPA, CMA, CIA, CPIM, has been the chief financial officer or controller of four companies, as well as a consulting manager at Ernst & Young and auditor at Deloitte & Touche. He received a master's degree in finance from Bentley College, an MBA from Babson College, and a bachelor's degree in economics from the University of Maine. He has been the two-time president of the Colorado Mountain Club, is an avid alpine skier and mountain biker, and is a certified master diver. Mr. Bragg resides in Centennial, Colorado. He is also the author of Accounting Best Practices and Design and Maintenance of Accounting Manuals, both from Wiley.

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Now fully updated and at your fingertips the most practical, authoritative guide to implementing GAAP Get the answers you need to prepare financial statements and keep up to date on the latest FASB requirements. Now fully revised and updated, Wiley GAAP Policies and Procedures, Second Edition is an ideal companion to the Wiley GAAP guide and provides the practical application information essential to ensuring that a company's accounting systems are fully capable of incorporating the most recent GAAP. A concise version of the more detailed GAAP found in the Wiley GAAP guides, Wiley GAAP Policies and Procedures, Second Edition features handy, illustrative decision trees showing how to determine which GAAP ruling to use in a variety of situations, eliminating hours of time wading through detailed GAAP rulings and presents:

• New chapters on interim reporting, segment reporting, and accounting changes and correction of errors
• Updated content on FAS No. 151, Inventory Costs, FAS No. 153, Exchanges of Non-monetary Assets, FAS No. 154, Accounting Changes and Error Correction, FAS No. 156, Servicing of Financial Assets
• Implementation on nineteen newly issued EITFs
• Specific accounting policies that comply with GAAP, especially in terms of creating controls that mesh with GAAP
• The most common accounting transactions modified to work within GAAP restrictions
• Specific controls that allow the maximum level of control over accounting systems while remaining in compliance with GAAP
• Templates for forms and reports that can be used in a GAAP-compliant accounting system
• Numerous examples of footnotes that can be used to describe GAAP-mandated financial disclosures
• Hundreds of GAAP-compliant journal entries for most accounting transactions

Aus dem Klappentext

Now fully updated and at your fingertips the most practical, authoritative guide to implementing GAAP Get the answers you need to prepare financial statements and keep up to date on the latest FASB requirements. Now fully revised and updated, Wiley GAAP Policies and Procedures, Second Edition is an ideal companion to the Wiley GAAP guide and provides the practical application information essential to ensuring that a company's accounting systems are fully capable of incorporating the most recent GAAP. A concise version of the more detailed GAAP found in the Wiley GAAP guides, Wiley GAAP Policies and Procedures, Second Edition features handy, illustrative decision trees showing how to determine which GAAP ruling to use in a variety of situations, eliminating hours of time wading through detailed GAAP rulings and presents:

• New chapters on interim reporting, segment reporting, and accounting changes and correction of errors
• Updated content on FAS No. 151, Inventory Costs, FAS No. 153, Exchanges of Non-monetary Assets, FAS No. 154, Accounting Changes and Error Correction, FAS No. 156, Servicing of Financial Assets
• Implementation on nineteen newly issued EITFs
• Specific accounting policies that comply with GAAP, especially in terms of creating controls that mesh with GAAP
• The most common accounting transactions modified to work within GAAP restrictions
• Specific controls that allow the maximum level of control over accounting systems while remaining in compliance with GAAP
• Templates for forms and reports that can be used in a GAAP-compliant accounting system
• Numerous examples of footnotes that can be used to describe GAAP-mandated financial disclosures
• Hundreds of GAAP-compliant journal entries for most accounting transactions

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Wiley GAAP Policies and Procedures

John Wiley & Sons

Chapter One

Overview 1 The GAAP Hierarchy 1 Researching GAAP 3 Researching Accounting Terminology 4 Researching Accounting Policies and Procedures 5 Researching Accounting Controls 5 Researching Accounting Forms and Reports 6 Researching Accounting Footnotes 7 Researching Accounting Journal Entries 7 Researching Accounting Record-keeping 8

OVERVIEW

This chapter is designed to give pointers to additional information in areas besides GAAP concepts. Though there are Concepts and Examples sections in each of the following chapters that give summarized versions of the relevant GAAP issues, the primary focus of this book is to provide information about ancillary topics that allow one to implement GAAP, such as accounting policies and procedures, controls, and reporting footnotes. Unfortunately, there are no authoritative sources for these GAAP implementation topics. Instead, the sections of this chapter devoted to each implementation topic list some organizations that can provide additional information, as well as key books that summarize or discuss related topics, including the name of each book's author, publisher, and date of publication. But first, we will address the GAAP hierarchy of accounting standards and rules, followed by the general approach for researching GAAP-related issues.

The GAAP Hierarchy

Generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) are standards and rules for reporting financial information, as established and approved by the Financial Accounting Standards Board.

There are three primary players in the promulgation of GAAP. First is the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB), which plays the lead role in establishing GAAP. Its Web site is located at www.fasb.org. Its mission is to "establish and improve standards of financial accounting for the guidance and education of the public, including issuers, auditors, and users of financial information." A subset of the FASB is the Emerging Issues Task Force (EITF), which (as its name implies) handles emerging accounting issues as soon as they become apparent, so that a standard approach can be created before any competing approaches come into use. This group typically deals with only very narrowly defined accounting issues, and its opinions are considered to be GAAP only if it can first reach a consensus opinion among its members. Finally, the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) is the principal representative body for certified public accountants within the United States. Its Web site is located at www.aicpa.org. It periodically issues research bulletins, audit and accounting guides, statements of position, and practice bulletins that, if approved by the FASB, are considered to be GAAP. Some GAAP is still ascribed to the Accounting Principles Board (APB), though this entity was phased out in 1973.

There are many documents issued by these three accounting entities that are considered part of GAAP. Each one is described in the following bullet points:

FASB Statements of Financial Accounting Standards. The highest form of GAAP, the SFAS series is the primary publication of the FASB, and is the most carefully formulated (and debated) of all GAAP documents. FASB Interpretations. Used to clarify Statements of Financial Accounting Standards or the pronouncements made by prior accounting entities that are still considered to be GAAP. APB Opinions. The primary publication of the old Accounting Principles Board, this was the equivalent of an SFAS prior to the formation of the FASB. FASB Technical Bulletins. Provide guidance on issues not covered by existing standards, and where the guidance is not expected to be costly or create a major change. AICPA Statements of Position. Provide guidance on financial accounting and reporting issues. AICPA Industry Audit and Accounting Guides. Provide guidance to auditors in examining and reporting on financial statements of entities in specific industries and provide standards on accounting problems unique to a particular industry. EITF Consensus Positions. Provide positions on the correct treatment of emerging accounting issues. AICPA Practice Bulletins. Provide guidance on narrowly defined accounting topics. FASB Implementation Guides. Provide notes on how to implement specific Statements of Financial Accounting Standards, written by the FASB staff. The guides are organized in a question, background, and answer format.

GAAP is organized in a descending pyramid of authoritative sources, as shown in Exhibit 1-1. It contains the following four categories:

1. Category A is the most authoritative GAAP, containing the Statements of Financial Accounting Standards and related Interpretations (as promulgated by the FASB), as well as AICPA Accounting Research Bulletins and Opinions of the Accounting Principles Board. 2. Category B contains all FASB Technical Bulletins, as well as all AICPA Statements of Position and AICPA Industry Audit and Accounting Guides that have been approved by the FASB. 3. Category C includes consensus positions of the FASB's EITF, as well as those Practice Bulletins created by the AICPA's Accounting Standards Executive Committee that have been approved by the FASB. The positions of the EITF tend to cover such specialized topics that there is no more authoritative form of GAAP in Categories A or B, so these positions tend to be the most senior form of GAAP in their topical areas. 4. Category D includes implementation guides published by the FASB staff, as well as AICPA accounting interpretations and prevalent accounting practices.

Researching GAAP

The simplest approach to researching GAAP is to review the Concepts and Examples sections in this book. If this does not yield a detailed answer, a more comprehensive source of summarized GAAP information is the Wiley GAAP 2007 guide. The Wiley GAAP 2007 guide contains a more comprehensive Concepts section than this book, and also contains a list of authoritative pronouncements at its beginning, as well as the applicable page reference leading to a more complete discussion of the issues within the text. If this approach still does not yield a clear answer to a GAAP problem, one should review selected GAAP source documents, of which the most comprehensive is the FASB's Original Pronouncements and Accounting Standards three-volume series (noted in the following book list). It lists all FASB Statements of Standards, as well as AICPA Pronouncements, FASB Interpretations, FASB Concepts Statements, and FASB Technical Bulletins. Of particular use is the topical index located at the end of the third volume, which cross-references each topic to a GAAP source. Other more narrowly defined topics are covered by the other GAAP sources noted in the following book list. If...