Teaching Advanced IFRS Accounting Topics

The Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants made a significant commitment to provide supplementary materials to assist in the teaching of IFRS to students. Last September the Institute issued some teaching material at the Intermediate level. The CICA has now issued IFRS teaching materials at the advanced level.

These teaching materials are distributed to Canadian Academics but can be downloaded free on the CICA's site. The document was prepared by a team of IFRS experts from National Accounting Firms and Academe.

The 280 page Filling the GAAP to IFRS is an exposition of some advanced IFRS implementation areas with illustrative examples.

This is not intended to replace existing advanced accounting textbooks. It is however, a very serious and thorough exposition of the topics. The document includes the "usual suspects" but a few extras (like "Biological Assets"- not covered under Canadian GAAP). Here are the contents

• Biological Assets
• Asset Impairment
• Provisions, Contingent Liabilities and Contingent Assets
• Joint Ventures
• Income Taxes
• Financial Instruments

Classification and reclassification
Fair Value Measurement issues
Impairments
Debt v Equity Classification
Disclosures
Hedge Accounting (were you afraid to ask)
De recognition (Securitization) of assets and liabilities

• Employee Benefits (includes pensions)
  
• Share Based Payments
• Business Combinations
• Consolidations and separate financial statements
• Foreign Currency Translation
• Earning per Share

When was teaching financial accounting ever this fun? The list does of course also include some topics that have been traditionally covered in upper intermediate level courses - hey just technicalities.

This document is required reading, especially for areas affecting you business. It will be a valuable piece of guidance going forward. There is a disclaimer at the beginning that the guidance is not authoritative in anyway. Nevertheless it reflects a lot of work by a lot of very informed individuals - not to be sneezed at! I will be going over this with a great deal of interest. I find the more I read the more issues come out of the woodwork.

These materials are written from a Canadian perspective and may be misleading from the point of view of other GAAP such as US GAAP, Brazilian GAAP, Indian GAAP or whatever. They could be useful as a guide on areas to be considered but please be careful, as we are careful when looking at IFRS presentations by US Accounting Firms. The SEC considers the development of teaching materials for IFRS an important milestone. Can similar materials for the US be far behind.