Further to our earlier post “Accounting for Changes to GAAP for Canadian Private Companies“, the Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants (CICA) has now released its guide to the new Private Enterprise GAAP. Resources, FAQs and other information about the new standards can be found here. The CICA’s guide is also available here. Note that when you save this guide, it has an .aspx extention which is hard to open. Simply change this extention to .pdf and the file will open as a regular PDF file.
Happy accounting!
Companies in the midst of the transition to International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) from the current Canadian GAAP are required to make detailed disclosures throughout the process. The Ontario Securities Commission (OSC) is monitoring the transition, and has found that these disclosures are not always up to snuff.
The CICA had written a good summary of the issue and provides IFRS resources for firms. The OSC also offers resources which provide insights as to what is expected in terms of disclosure. See the following links:
CICA Summary:
http://www.cica.ca/transition/intheloop/
OCS News Release:
http://www.osc.gov.on.ca/en/NewsEvents_nr_20100205_52-718_osc-ifrs-transition.htm
Canada’s new public company accounting standards, IFRS are getting a lot of press these days. However a somewhat lesser known change is also in the works, that of Canadian GAAP for Private Enterprises (PE GAAP).
The purpose of this new standard is to simplify some of the reporting requirements provided under the current Canadian GAAP for private companies who generally have limited external reporting.
The most significant changes are to the following aspects of private enterprise financial reporting:
The new PE GAAP takes effect January 1, 2011. However comparative figures for 2010 are required, so an opening balance sheet must be prepared for January 1, 2010 as well (for those reporting on a calendar year). That means that companies adopting PE GAAP are already behind the eight ball.
Section 1500 of the CICA Handbook offers some adjustments for first-time adopters of PE GAAP, including optional and mandatory exemptions and disclosures. These adjustments will make adoption of the new requirements both possible and minimize opportunistic behaviour as a result of the changes.
PE GAAP resources are available on the following websites:
Additional Resources from accounting firms are available at:
0
Back to top