Will the New FASB Code Change Accounting?

Will the New FASB Code Change Accounting? - 6/17/2009

Home

Index of Filings

News and Press Releases

Filings

Decisions

Settlements

Litigation Activity Indices

Top Ten List

Annual/Quarterly Updates

Clearinghouse Research

Articles & Papers

Search

Related Sites

About Us

Local Rules

Sponsors

Register

_______________
Copyright © 2001
Stanford Law School

2009 News and Press Releases

SEARCH

News	News 2009
HEADLINES \| SETTLEMENTS AND DISMISSALS \| COURT FILINGS LINKS TO OTHER NEWS \| NEWS ARCHIVE	HEADLINES ARCHIVED SETTLEMENTS AND DISMISSALS ARCHIVED

HEADLINE NEWS:

Will the New FASB Code Change Accounting?, Less Than Three Weeks Away From The July 1 Launch Of The Codification System, There Are Still Many Unknowns.
Alix Stuart

CFO.com. June 17, 2009
_________________________________________________________________________

EXCERPT: Get ready to say good-bye to the alphabet soup that currently comprises Generally Accepted Accounting Principles. As of July 1, standards now known as FAS, FSP, EITF, or APB, among others, will be subsumed into a new and less letter-centric organizational system as part of the Financial Accounting Standards Board's codification project. The debut of the online filing cabinet promises to streamline GAAP by grouping all rules into roughly 90 topics, and should draw a sharper distinction between authoritative and non-authoritative GAAP. "Instead of GAAP being represented by thousands of different documents, it's represented by one single authoritative source," says Ronald P. Guerrette, vice president of the Financial Accounting Foundation, which oversees FASB. However, less than three weeks away from the launch, there are still many unknowns, including whether or not the FASB's promise that GAAP is not changing will turn out to be true. The first surprise for some may be that this codification project is happening at all. Over 50% of 530 U.S. CFOs and senior comptrollers surveyed by Grant Thornton in late April said they didn't know about the rules restructuring, despite the fact that a preliminary version has been available for viewing and comment since January 2008. FASB is now sending out e-mail codification updates, and offers a tutorial on the new system on a website dedicated to the project. Over 70,000 people have signed up for that website so far, says Guerrette. CFOs who are aware of the coming change are fairly positive. But they're also realistic about the hassle of the transition period. "It's a great step, and will absolutely decrease the amount of time my staff spends on accounting research, but there are going to be some areas of ambiguity; it's just the cost of doing the project," says Steffan Tomlinson, CFO of wireless-networking firm Aruba Networks.

Back to News page | Back to Archived News 2009 page | Back to Top

�