Company Accounts Flashcards
What is a financial statement? (1)
- Summarises all transactions by a company during its accounting period
What are the 3 main financial statements? (3)
- Balance sheet - ‘snapshot’ of a company accounts on the last day of the accounting period - year end or balance sheet date. Lists assets and liabilities of a company - illustrates financial health of a company at year end. If assets exceed liabilities, company has net assets, if liabilities exceeds assets, company has net liabilities
- Income statement - shows all income and expenditure relating to a company’s account period - usually a year. Whole 12 month periods. If income exceeds expenditure, company has profit. If expenditure exceeds income, there is a loss
- Cash flow statement - shows cash received and paid by a company during the accounting period. Similar to a bank statement and shows reasons for movements
Who creatures financial statements? (3)
- Directors are responsible for producing a set of accounts
- Accounts must be audited by an independent firm (appointed by shareholders)
- Approved by shareholders at the company’s annual general meeting
What is the Companies Act 2006? (4)
- Directors of a company are required to produce a balance sheet and income statement annually
- True and fair view
- Must be audited
- Large companies must also provide: comprehensive income statement with reference period (12 months), a directors report and an auditors report, cash flow statement, statement of changes in equity. These must be delivered to the Registrar of Companies
What rules are imposed on listed companies on the LSE? (5)
- Directors reason for any significant departures from standard account practice
- Particulars of companies in which the group holds 20% or more of the voting shares
- A statement as to whether or not the company is a close company (under the control of its directors or 5 or fewer people)
- Particulars of any authority for the company to purchase its own shares
- Listed companies produce help yearly accounts too
Who is exempt from producing accounts? (8)
- Sole trades and partnership have no legal requirement to produce accounts
- Small or medium sized companies do not need to deliver annual financial statements - must satisfy at least 2 of the below criteria
Small
- Turnover: less than £10.2m
- Total assets: less than £5.1m
- Employees: less than 50
Medium
- Turnover: less than £36m
- Total assets: less than £18m
- Employees: less than 250
Summarise the importance of an auditors report? (5)
- Needed for large companies and listed companies on the LSE
- Appointed by shareholders at company meetings or trustee if it is a trust
- Must be properly prepared in accordance with Companies Act
- Give a ‘true and fair view’
- If conditions are met a ‘clean’ audit report is produced. If not, then auditor will ‘qualify’ the report
What makes an auditors report qualified? (2)
- Limitation in scope: opinion cannot be formed to a lack of audit evidence
- Disagreement: the auditor disagrees with information in or view given by financial statements
What are the two possible magnitudes for qualifications of an auditors report? (2)
- Material: likely to influence a user of the financial statements
- Fundamental: So important as to undermine the financial statements as a whole
What are the 4 types of qualification of auditors reports?
- Fundamental uncertainty
- Material uncertainty
- Fundamental disagreement
- Material disagreement
Who is exempt from needing their accounts audited? (1)
- Small companies (Turnover <£10.2, total assets <£5.1m, employees <50
Who sets the standards for financial reporting? (4)
- International Accounting Standards Board issues (IASB) International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS)
- Requirement only applies to the consolidated and individual accounts of listed companies in the UK
- UK companies not using IFRS must comply with Financial Reporting Council
- Take mandatory effect for accounting periods after 1 Jan 2015 - referred to as GAAP (Generally Accepted Accounting Policies)
What are the accounting standards of Generally Accepted Accounting Policies (GAAP)? (4)
- FRS 100 - Application of Financial Reporting Requirements
- FRS 101 - Reduced Disclosure Framework
- FRS 102 - Financial Reporting Standards applicable in the UK and Ireland
- FRS 105 - Amended accounting standards for micro entities - turnover not more than £632k, balance sheet not more than £316k, no of employees not more than 10
What is the main regulation for accounting in the EU? (4)
- International Financials Reporting Standards by IASB
- Fourth Council Directives for entities not preparing their accounts in accordance with IFRSs
- Conflict between EU directives and IFRSs must be eliminated
- European Financial Reporting Advisory Group reviews this - technical review
Summarise the features of a balance sheet (statement of financial positions) (6)
- List of asset and liability’s of a company at its year end
- Top half = total assets owned by the company
- Bottom half = equity and liabilities (paid in/still there) by shareholders and creditors
- Total assets of a company (top half) always equals equity and liabilities (bottom half) e.g. balance sheet balances
- Total assets = equity + liability. This is the accounting equation
- Net asset value = total assets - total liabilities
What are non current assets (NCAs)? (4)
- Long term assets of a company - longer than 1 year
- NCAs break down into intangible, tangible and investments
- Money spent by a company on NCAs is known a CAPEX
-Any other expenditure is known as revenue expenditure and is charged against profit in the income statement
What are intangible non current assets? (4)
- Generate future revenues but have no physical substance e.g. goodwill, brand names, patents and copyrights
- Most intangible NCAs have limited life and over time they wear out. Their values in subsequent balance sheets need to be reduced
- Loss of value over their useable lives is reflected in the accounts through amortisation
- Goodwill is not amortised, the value for this is tested for impairment each year
What assets is the impairment test applied to? (3)
- Intangible assets with indefinite useful life
- All goodwill assets
- Whenever there is an indication of impairment
Summarise goodwill intangible NCAs (4)
- Goodwill is a combination of reasons why a buyers might pay more than the sum total of the assets of the company
- Reputation, brand loyalty, quality of products and staff
- Measured as the difference between the fair value of purchase consideration paid and the fair value of the acquired business identifiable assets and liabilities
- Goodwill = difference between amount paid for a business and the assets acquired e.g. 100-80 = 20
What are tangible non current assets? (5)
- Plant, property and machinery - long term assets with physical substance
- Items bought by a company to use to generate profit - provides infrastructure for the company
- Like intangible NCAs, tangible NCAs may also devalue over time - this is known as depreciation
- Freehold land doesn’t usually depreciate over time
- NCA investments are presented separately in the balanced sheet and if held for sale are not depreciated - measured at the lower of the carry amount and fair value minus costs to sell. Fair value is based on market valuation
What are current assets? (3)
- Short term assets of a company
- Held for conversion into cash, usually within a year of the balance sheet date
- Three types of current assets: inventory, receivables, cash
What is inventory in current assets? (3)
- Company’s inventory held at the balance sheet date e.g. number of mobile phones for a mobile phone retailer. Physical stock
- Valued prudently at the lower of cost and net realisable value
- Net realisable value is the amount the company would receive if the item of inventory was sold today minus incidental costs of sale
What is receivables in current assets? (4)
- Amounts owed to a company at the year end
- Several types of receivables but the largest component of total debtors is trade receivables
- Trade receivables arise when sales are made on credit - amount owed to a company by customers at the balance sheet date
- Prepayment is recorded as an asset on the balance sheet
What are provisions on the balance sheet? (5)
- Uncertain fall in the amount of an asset
- Changes in provisions are charged as an expense on the income statement
- Provisions for doubtful debt - made to highlight potential default on an amount of receivables
- Provisions for depreciation - shows the accumulated depreciation on an NCA
- Provisions for unrealised profit on stock - recognises unrealised manufacturing profit - where a company makes finished goods rather than buying them from an external provider. If good is not sold, profit is not realised