Debtors on balance sheet

Gill Gittings

Can someone confirm if it is required to show debtors after one year to be shown separartely on the balance sheet?
Thanks in advance.

Monsoon

This is a hazy answer but I believe it's shown separately in a note. I think.

Steve Collings

Hi,

Are you reporting under current UK GAAP? If so there is a very old Task Force Abstract (UITF 4 issued for a/p ending on or after 23 August 1992) which recognises that in some cases long term debtors may be so material in the context of net current assets that non-disclosure on the face of the balance sheet may mislead the user of the accounts. Therefore if the amounts due to the entity after more than one year are considered material in the context of net current assets, separate disclosure on the face of the balance sheet is required - if not considered material then note disclosure is merely required splitting non-current/current.

IAS 1 has a similar stance and talks about presentation based on liquidity providing more relevant and reliable information then the non-current/current split be omitted but in any case IAS 1 would also require note disclosure splitting current and non-current debtors.

Hope that helps.

Regards
Steve

Gill Gittings

Thanks Monsoon and Steve.

Steve when will this new IFRS thingy come in the UK? I was asked this today.

Steve Collings

Gill Gittings wrote: »

Steve when will this new IFRS thingy come in the UK? I was asked this today.

The planned date was for accounting periods starting on or after 1 January 2012 (December 2012 year ends). However I strongly suspect this date will be delayed because we're nearly half way through 2010 and practitioners need to get to grips with the new IFRS for SMEs as well as dealing with the restatement of the 2011 comparatives which may cause a few headaches (though I doubt to the degree that was faced when audit firms switched from SASs to ISAs).

HMRC have requested the ASB extend the deadline because the GAAP switch will co-incide with their XBRL changes so HMRC want the deadline extending.

There's an added problem in that there are legal issues which need to be resolved because IFRS for SMEs is not currently fully compatible with the Fourth and Seventh EU Directive (Fourth Directive deals with Companies with Limited Liability - the Seventh Directive deals with consolidated financial statements of companies with Ltd liability) and the draft working paper confirms the legalities need to be sorted first - so this may further delay the implementation.

Will it come in eventually? (This was asked of me by the Editor at AccountingWEB) - yes I definitely do think it will!

Kind regards
Steve

stevef

For Central Government and the Health Service IFRS came into effect on 1 April 2009, for Local Government (including Police and Fire and Rescue) from 1 April 2010.