Scenario

Assume you are working as the Finance controller for a public listed company. You have a team of another 3 members who work as accountants and reporting to you. Your team has been assigned a task to submit a report and a presentation in the next board meeting. CEO of your company written a mail attaching an extract from a technical article published by ACCA, request your team to focus on the points mentioned. Further, he had given your team the discretion to include relevant items in the report and presentation.

In March 2018, the International Accounting Standards Board (the Board) finished its revision of The Framework for Financial Reporting (the Framework). The primary purpose of financial information is to be useful to existing and potential investors, lenders and other creditors (users) when making decisions about the financing of the entity and exercising rights to vote on, or otherwise influence, managements actions that affect the use of the entitys economic resources. The Framework sets out the information needed to assess managements stewardship and separates this from the information that users need to assess the prospects of the entitys future net cash flows.

Traditionally, Accountants are concerned themselves with their bottom linesor the monetary profits their businesses made. Today, more leaders have begun to think sustainably. The triple bottom line theory expands the traditional accounting framework to include two other performance areas: the social and environmental impacts of their company.

In July 2009, the International Accounting Standards Board (the Board) issued the IFRS for SMEs Standard (the SMEs Standard) and amended in 2015. This standard provides an alternative framework that can be applied by eligible entities in place of the full set of International Financial Reporting Standards. The principal aim when developing accounting standards for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) is to provide a framework that generates relevant, reliable and useful information which should provide a high quality and understandable set of accounting standards suitable for SMEs.

The CEO listed down the key requirement which should be included in your report and presentation as follows.

Question 1:

Your report should assess the Financial Reporting Framework, its Strengths and Weaknesses, considering the different users of accounting information and reason for demand for accounting principles and standards.

Question 2:

Based on the annual report of your company, assess the application of Triple bottom line approach and corporates social responsibility in the published accounts.