Accounting period

About: Accounting period is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 157 publications have been published within this topic receiving 2245 citations.

The Accountability and Corporate Disclosure Practices in Tanzania

Abstract: There is a general agreement that disclosure practices are not random. Yet, knowledge of the factors which they are associated with is far from perfect, particularly in the developing world where the literature in this area is sparse. Developing countries environments are significantly different from the market economies of the west. There is a general lack of effective enforcement system, active stock exchanges and appropriate accounting regulation and training schemes. In order to study corporate disclosure practices and the factors with which they are associated in Tanzania, a random sample of 58 profit-motivated companies was selected and their CARs obtained. The study focused on the 1986 CARs, although, due to data availability problems, CARs for the years 1985-1987 were examined. The four measures of the quality of corporate disclosure were examined. These are the extent of mandatory disclosures, the extent of voluntary disclosures, the timeliness of these disclosures and type of audit opinions. Two indexes were constructed in order to capture the extent of corporate disclosures. One was based on disclosure requirements as stipulated by the National Board of Accountants and Auditors (NBAA) and the Companies Ordinance. The other evolved from a literature review and was refined through interviews conducted in Tanzania. It contains the items considered desirable given the environment but are not prescribed requirements. The timeliness of disclosure was captured by the period between the end of accounting period and the signing of audit report in months. The five possible types of audit opinion were ranked from one (negative opinion) to five (clean opinion). It was observed that, in general, the quality of disclosure practices in Tanzania is unsatisfactory. On the average, the extent of mandatory disclosure is only 50.5%. The average reporting time is 8.1 months, well beyond the legal requirement of six months. It was observed, however, that most CARs receive clean audit reports. Using Spearman's rank order correlation test, Mann-Whitney test, Kruskal-Wallis test and chi2-test, it is revealed that: While the extent of mandatory information disclosure may be used as a proxy for the extent of voluntary information disclosure and vice versa, it is also necessary to examine the timeliness of disclosures and types of audit opinion if conclusions on quality of corporate disclosures are to be drawn. The four measure of quality of corporate information disclosures are associated with different corporate attributes. While types of audit opinion were found to be negatively associated to P/E ratio; timeliness of disclosures were associated jointly to P/T ratio and current ratio, and voluntary disclosures related to asset size and type of accounting firms providing audit services, it was not clear whether timeliness of disclosure is also related jointly to type of corporate governance or type of audit firms. It was also not clear whether the extent of mandatory disclosures is related jointly to type of corporate governance and type of audit firms or just to one of the two factors. The overall explanation of the observed unsatisfactory disclosure practices resulting from the findings of this study is the failure to stimulate demand for accounting information. While disclosure regulatory approach appropriate only to market economies was adopted in Tanzania, the conditions which make it meaningful were not found in Tanzania. Thus, for example, effective financial press, stock exchange and financial analysts are all lacking. More significantly, It was observed that participants in corporate governance in Tanzania do not base the decisions on accounting information.

Tangible assets depreciation issues

Abstract: Buildings, machinery, equipment, furniture, computers, parking lots, cars, and trucksare examples of tangible assets that will not last indefinitely, but more than one year.During each accounting period, a portion of the cost of these assets is being usedup. Each company, due its establishment, procures tangible assets as the base forits operation. If you are responsible person (CEO) in the production company, it isnot unusual if you find out that some of your production assets are still in operation,but they were completely depreciated. By this way, main accounting principles forreporting on tangible assets (cost and revenue matching principle) are not respected.The way the CEO solve this problem can have big impact on costing price and profitor loss at the end of the year. Problem is that useful life of asset was not properlyassessed or revised. As result, carrying amount and income in financial statementsare not correct. Solving these problems is very important for creating consolidationstatements and representing financial statements due to International Financial ReportingStandards, especially if large audit firms audit financial statements. The aimof this work is to help understanding theoretical and practical issues on tangible assets,especially depreciation, trough analyzing available literature, scientific workswritten world abroad and practical research made by author.

Performance measurement in Juliusz Au's theory of agricultural accounting in 19th century Poland

Abstract: Before the Partitions, Poland, beside Russia, was the largest, territorially compact European state. As a result of the Partitions of Poland, which were carried out in 1772, 1793 and 1795, Polish territory was divided and annexed by the three partitioning powers: Russia, Germany and Prussia. In an attempt to resist aggressive Germanization by the invader, Poles employed, among others, the methods of “organic work” and “work at the grass roots” (a programme, launched by the Polish positivists, of economic and cultural development through spreading literacy and popularizing science among the masses). It was on Polish territories under Prussian occupation that the theoretical and practical foundations of farm accounting were developed (Bernacki 2007b, p. 116-117). The main objectives of this paper are: to place the work and theory of Juliusz Au within the social and political context of the Prussian partition; to present a theory of agricultural accounting developed by J. Au; to evaluate J. Au’s theory from present-day perspective. J. Au is the author of a comprehensive, universal theory of accounting encompassing its three cognitive levels (aspects): (1) general level, covering the concept, objectives and method of accounting; (2) procedural level, comprising principles of assets measurement, choice of accounting period and production cost calculation; (3) supporting level, comprising organization of accounting, rules for statistical data collection and audit procedures.

Vorrichtung bzw. Verfahren zur Verwaltung einer Telekommunikationsanlage

Abstract: The invention concerns a device or process for the control of a telecommunications facility with at least a connection to a telecommunications terminal (13), a specification memory (12) to keep control information which determines the performance characteristics of the connection and is adjustable for the configuration of the facility, an accounting memory (1) to keep accounting data sets which contain the control information written in the specification memory (12), the time information determining the accounting period as well as the identification information determining the connection to be configured, a time control (4, 5, 6) for writing the accounting data sets kept in the accounting memory (1) into the specification memory (12) during each accounting period, an entry unit (9) for the entry of the accounting data sets , an entry control unit (8) for writing the input accounting data sets into the accounting memory (1) on receipt of a release signal, as well as comparator unit (7) for the production of the release signal after a consistency check of the input accounting data sets by comparison with the accounting data sets already entered.

Inequality and the Time-Structure of Household Income in Israel

Abstract: The aim of this paper is to empirically evaluate the effect of the length of the accounting period on indices of inequality of household income in Israel. There are three main findings: (1) The analysis of the impact of the account period on the Gini index of inequality can be done in a way which is identical to analyzing the effect of the accounting period on the coefficient of variation; (2) Changing the accounting period from one month to three months decreases, on average, the Gini index of inequality by about 1.7%. Furthermore, the Gini index calculated from a three-month accounting period was 3.9-4.1% higher than the index based on a twelve-month period. The change in the accounting period from twelve months to three months accounts for 27 to 37 percent of the increase in inequality in the last two decades, depending on the type of income considered. (3) The above relationship is stable over the years but is sensitive to the definition of income.