The International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) and the United States Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) have reaffirmed their commitment to accomplishing the convergence of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) and US Generally Accepted Accounting Practice (US GAAP), following their March 2010 progress report. Among the standards subject to this convergence project, is IAS 23 - Borrowing Costs. Taken at face value, the convergence of IAS 23 (IFRS) and SFAS 34 (US GAAP), and looking at convergence in general, the idea is productive and beneficial. It will lead to more comparative information as it eliminates the differences. The downside, however, could very easily be that convergence might just be taking place for the sake of convergence, and that the end result might not necessarily lead to more comparative and cost effective information. When specifically considering the convergence of the two borrowing costs standards (SFAS 34 and IAS 23), it is clear that differences remain even after their convergence, and therefore it does not promote comparability. The revision of IAS 23 might actually have been more costly and less beneficial, rather than the other way around. The first article in this dissertation claims that the mandatory capitalisation of borrowing costs is more costly than not, and that the IASB did not adequately consider the cost implications in their decision to change IAS 23, as well as that the benefits obtained from the capitalisation of borrowing costs are not that noticeable in practice. Participants in this study also seemed to agree that the application of IAS 23 is fairly difficult. Delving deeper into the technical aspects of IAS 23, a number of questions also arise relating to its application. This appears to be substantiated by the findings in the second article where instances were identified where the opinions of the participants relating to, for instance, what would be regarded as a 'substantial period of time', were divided. Differences relating to the above above viii may lead to one person capitalising borrowing costs, while another in the same situation would not. On the upside, a few instances were identified where participants were not as divided in their views. Therefore, although there appear to be some uncertainties within IAS 23, there are fewer than one would have expected. In summary, the revised IAS 23, in other words, the mandatory capitalisation of borrowing costs on qualifying assets, was viewed by participants as being more costly and difficult to apply than not and they felt that some technical uncertainties do exist within IAS 23. Recommendations have been made in this dissertation based on the useful information obtained. / Thesis (M.Com. (Accountancy))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2011.

Recent corporate reporting history is well–known for its corporate failures and questionable accountancy practices, many of which caused the profession to be frowned upon. However, the splodge on the accounting profession?s reputation goes deeper than its corporate reporting failures. The scientific foundation thereof is also being questioned in academic circles. Even though accounting scholars have been trying to formulate foundational accounting theories, it has been the accounting regulators that have been more successful in promoting their versions of what accounting theory should be, which place a question mark on the legitimacy of current day accounting theory. This thesis aims to delve deeper into the foundational philosophies of accounting and its impact on the practice of accounting. With the current accounting globalisation efforts, the profession?s stewardship function is becoming less prominent in its promulgated standards, which in turn brings the focus on the many questionable ethical practices found in the profession. Even though the regulatory bodies require their members to commit themselves to professional codes of conduct, which entails competency, integrity, objectivity and confidentiality, the 1st article in this thesis claims that ethical conduct is more than mere adherence to rules and regulations. It is also about the image of not only the profession, but also accounting research and education. Accounting is broadly practised, researched and taught within its so–called conceptual framework, of which a key objective is to guide and inform accounting practice. The conceptual framework became the basis upon which accounting theory is based. However, many accounting scholars are openly critical of presenting accounting theory as a set of practical guidelines. The 2nd article in the thesis concludes that, from an academic perspective, accounting theory should be based on three quintessential guidelines. The first of which is its primary purpose of reporting on the historic economic events, secondly the provision of useable and comparable information about these events and finally, the facilitation of business decisions based on relevant and reliable information. In the above mentioned business decisions, the concept of value is often taken for granted and many accounting techniques? effectiveness is judged on how well it approximates an item?s value. The 3rd article argues that the multiple purposes for which accounting information is used complicates the issue of value, as reported by accounting. Two key conflicting valuation perspectives are the so–called decision–usefulness and true income perspectives. The current drive towards fair value accounting, as opposed to historic cost accounting, cast doubts on the reliability and relevance of accounting information. Even though it may be argued that value–based techniques are more relevant because it is a better reflection of the current business conditions, the mere subjective nature thereof and the accountant?s objective valuation skills make the true relevance of this information questionable. Furthermore, mixed model valuations found in financial statements makes cross–company information unreliable. Accountancy research of the past four decades focussed on the concept of user decision–usefulness. The user is also pre–eminent in the globalisation of accounting standards of the FASB and the IASB, where users are specified as the equity investors, lenders and capital providers. The 4th article acknowledges that although these user categories are important consumers of the financial data, there are other users which are also impacted by the financial information and the company?s operational performances. There are also concerns over accounting?s key assumptions, such as its quantification and predictive abilities, which are fundamental to the decision–usefulness objective. Furthermore, there are questions around how the regulators decided what information is suppose to be useful and what type of utility is being sought. In summary, the focus on the vocational aspects of accountancy stands in contrast to claims of accounting as an academic discipline in the social sciences. The reality is that the practices of the profession will probably always play a central role in what is taught at university level, and the regulators, as the final authority on accounting standards, will probably remain dictatorial in promulgating their versions of accounting theory. Yet, accounting and its wide spread impact on society, makes it a key discipline within the economical and management sciences. It is therefore essential for the resurrection of accounting as a social scientific discipline that there is a return to foundational accounting research that will prepare (and enable) prospective practitioners and academics to question the status quo and push back on accounting practices that are threatening to extinguish the flame of accounting scholarship. / Thesis (Ph.D. (Accounting))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2011.

The International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) and the United States Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) have reaffirmed their commitment to accomplishing the convergence of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) and US Generally Accepted Accounting Practice (US GAAP), following their March 2010 progress report. Among the standards subject to this convergence project, is IAS 23 - Borrowing Costs. Taken at face value, the convergence of IAS 23 (IFRS) and SFAS 34 (US GAAP), and looking at convergence in general, the idea is productive and beneficial. It will lead to more comparative information as it eliminates the differences. The downside, however, could very easily be that convergence might just be taking place for the sake of convergence, and that the end result might not necessarily lead to more comparative and cost effective information. When specifically considering the convergence of the two borrowing costs standards (SFAS 34 and IAS 23), it is clear that differences remain even after their convergence, and therefore it does not promote comparability. The revision of IAS 23 might actually have been more costly and less beneficial, rather than the other way around. The first article in this dissertation claims that the mandatory capitalisation of borrowing costs is more costly than not, and that the IASB did not adequately consider the cost implications in their decision to change IAS 23, as well as that the benefits obtained from the capitalisation of borrowing costs are not that noticeable in practice. Participants in this study also seemed to agree that the application of IAS 23 is fairly difficult. Delving deeper into the technical aspects of IAS 23, a number of questions also arise relating to its application. This appears to be substantiated by the findings in the second article where instances were identified where the opinions of the participants relating to, for instance, what would be regarded as a 'substantial period of time', were divided. Differences relating to the above above viii may lead to one person capitalising borrowing costs, while another in the same situation would not. On the upside, a few instances were identified where participants were not as divided in their views. Therefore, although there appear to be some uncertainties within IAS 23, there are fewer than one would have expected. In summary, the revised IAS 23, in other words, the mandatory capitalisation of borrowing costs on qualifying assets, was viewed by participants as being more costly and difficult to apply than not and they felt that some technical uncertainties do exist within IAS 23. Recommendations have been made in this dissertation based on the useful information obtained. / Thesis (M.Com. (Accountancy))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2011.

增長層級式自我組織映射網路(GHSOM)屬於一種非監督式類神經網路，為自我組織映射網路(SOM)的延伸，擅長於對樣本分群，以輔助分析樣本族群裡的共同特徵，並且可以透過族群間存在的空間關係假設來建立分類器，進而辨別出異常的資料。 因此本研究提出一個創新的對偶方法(即為一個建立決策支援系統架構的方法)分別對舞弊與非舞弊樣本分群，首先兩類別之群組會被配對，即辨識某一特定無弊群體的非舞弊群體對照組，針對這些配對族群，套用基於不同空間假設所設立的分類規則以檢測舞弊與非舞弊群體中是否有存在某種程度的空間關係，此外並對於舞弊樣本的分群結果加入特徵萃取機制。分類績效最好的分類規則會被用來偵測受測樣本是否有舞弊的嫌疑，萃取機制的結果則會用來標示有舞弊嫌疑之受測樣本的舞弊行為特徵以及相關的輸入變數，以做為後續的決策輔助。 更明確地說，本研究分別透過非舞弊樣本與舞弊樣本建立一個非舞弊GHSOM樹以及舞弊GHSOM樹，且針對每一對GHSOM群組建立分類規則，其相應的非舞弊/舞弊為中心規則會適應性地依循決策者的風險偏好最佳化調整規則界線，整體而言較優的規則會被決定為分類規則。非舞弊為中心的規則象徵絕大多數的舞弊樣本傾向分布於非舞弊樣本的周圍，而舞弊為中心的規則象徵絕大多數的非舞弊樣本傾向分布於舞弊樣本的周圍。 此外本研究加入了一個特徵萃取機制來發掘舞弊樣本分群結果中各群組之樣本資料的共同特質，其包含輸入變數的特徵以及舞弊行為模式，這些資訊將能輔助決策者(如資本提供者)評估受測樣本的誠實性，輔助決策者從分析結果裡做出更進一步的分析來達到審慎的信用決策。 本研究將所提出的方法套用至財報舞弊領域(屬於財務舞弊偵測的子領域)進行實證，實驗結果證實樣本之間存在特定的空間關係，且相較於其他方法如SVM、SOM+LDA和GHSOM+LDA皆具有更佳的分類績效。因此顯示本研究所提出的機制可輔助驗證財務相關數據的可靠性。此外，根據SOM的特質，即任何受測樣本歸類到某特定族群時，該族群訓練樣本的舞弊行為特徵將可以代表此受測樣本的特徵推論。這樣的原則可以用來協助判斷受測樣本的可靠性，並可供持續累積成一個舞弊知識庫，做為進一步分析以及制定相關信用決策的參考。本研究所提出之基於對偶方法的決策支援系統架構可以被套用到其他使用財務數據為資料來源的財務舞弊偵測情境中，作為輔助決策的基礎。 / The Growing Hierarchical Self-Organizing Map (GHSOM) is extended from the Self-Organizing Map (SOM). The GHSOM’s unsupervised learning nature such as the adaptive group size as well as the hierarchy structure renders its availability to discover the statistical salient features from the clustered groups, and could be used to set up a classifier for distinguishing abnormal data from regular ones based on spatial relationships between them. Therefore, this study utilizes the advantage of the GHSOM and pioneers a novel dual approach (i.e., a proposal of a DSS architecture) with two GHSOMs, which starts from identifying the counterparts within the clustered groups. Then, the classification rules are formed based on a certain spatial hypothesis, and a feature extraction mechanism is applied to extract features from the fraud clustered groups. The dominant classification rule is adapted to identify suspected samples, and the results of feature extraction mechanism are used to pinpoint their relevant input variables and potential fraud activities for further decision aid. Specifically, for the financial fraud detection (FFD) domain, a non-fraud (fraud) GHSOM tree is constructed via clustering the non-fraud (fraud) samples, and a non-fraud-central (fraud-central) rule is then tuned via inputting all the training samples to determine the optimal discrimination boundary within each leaf node of the non-fraud (fraud) GHSOM tree. The optimization renders an adjustable and effective rule for classifying fraud and non-fraud samples. Following the implementation of the DSS architecture based on the proposed dual approach, the decision makers can objectively set their weightings of type I and type II errors. The classification rule that dominates another is adopted for analyzing samples. The dominance of the non-fraud-central rule leads to an implication that most of fraud samples cluster around the non-fraud counterpart, meanwhile the dominance of fraud-central rule leads to an implication that most of non-fraud samples cluster around the fraud counterpart. Besides, a feature extraction mechanism is developed to uncover the regularity of input variables and fraud categories based on the training samples of each leaf node of a fraud GHSOM tree. The feature extraction mechanism involves extracting the variable features and fraud patterns to explore the characteristics of fraud samples within the same leaf node. Thus can help decision makers such as the capital providers evaluate the integrity of the investigated samples, and facilitate further analysis to reach prudent credit decisions. The experimental results of detecting fraudulent financial reporting (FFR), a sub-field of FFD, confirm the spatial relationship among fraud and non-fraud samples. The outcomes given by the implemented DSS architecture based on the proposed dual approach have better classification performance than the SVM, SOM+LDA, GHSOM+LDA, SOM, BPNN and DT methods, and therefore show its applicability to evaluate the reliability of the financial numbers based decisions. Besides, following the SOM theories, the extracted relevant input variables and the fraud categories from the GHSOM are applicable to all samples classified into the same leaf nodes. This principle makes that the extracted pre-warning signal can be applied to assess the reliability of the investigated samples and to form a knowledge base for further analysis to reach a prudent decision. The DSS architecture based on the proposed dual approach could be applied to other FFD scenarios that rely on financial numbers as a basis for decision making.

本文透過比較分析我國收入認列會計準則、現行IFRSs收入認列規定、顧客合約收入草案規定及現行稅務法令規定之差異，對企業在會計及稅務上之影響進行研究分析。研究結果分為兩部分：會計影響方面，在ROC GAAP轉換為IFRSs時有影響者為委託人和代理人之判斷；在IFRSs轉換為顧客合約收入草案時有影響者為信用風險、附退貨權之銷貨、保固、再買回協議、開帳並代管之銷售等五個部分；轉換為IFRSs及顧客合約收入草案時皆有影響者為客戶忠誠計劃、客戶移轉之資產及建造合約三個部分。在稅務影響方面，在ROC GAAP轉換為IFRSs實有影響者為多元要素合約、委託人和代理人之判斷、客戶忠誠計劃、分期付款銷貨、商品或勞務交換、授權費和權利金及客戶移轉之資產七個部分；在IFRSs轉換為顧客合約收入草案時有影響者為信用風險、附退貨權之銷貨及保固；轉換為IFRSs及顧客合約收入草案時皆有影響者為建造合約。 / This study compares the differences between Taiwanese revenue recognition standards, existing IFRSs revenue recognition requirements, IFRS exposure draft “Revenue from contract with customer” and the current tax laws regulation and analyzes the impacts of adopting IFRSs on Taiwanese entities’ accounting and tax practices. The conclusions of this study are divided into two parts. The first part is for accounting. The issue of principal versus agent consideration will have an impact on accounting only when ROC GAAP conversion with IFRSs. The issues of credit risk, sale with a right of return, warranties, repurchase agreements and bill-and-hold arrangements will have impact on accounting only when the exposure draft becomes effective. The issues of customer loyalty program, transfers of assets from customers and construction contracts will have impacts on accounting both when first time adopting IFRSs and subsequently applying the exposure draft. The second part is for taxation. The issues of multiple-element arrangement, principal versus agent consideration, customer loyalty program, installment sales, exchange for goods or services, royalties and transfers of assets from customers will have impacts on taxation only when first-time adopting IFRSs. The issues of credit risk, sale with right of returns and warranties will have impacts on tax only when the exposure draft becomes effective. The issue of construction contracts will have an impact on taxation both when first time adopting IFRSs and subsequently applying the exposure draft.

The traditional focus of financial reporting has been on meeting the needs of investors and creditors. However, meeting the needs of other users of financial reports, particularly the employees, cannot be ignored. Employee reporting has therefore evolved as a form of reporting which meets the needs of employees for information about the enterprise for which they work. In South Africa, this is a particularly pertinent topic as a result of recent developments which highlight the need to provide other users with information and emphasize the rights of employees. Furthermore, companies in South Africa are producing employee reports although there is no guidance by any regulatory bodies as to the form and contents of such reports. This study examines the desirability of employee reporting in South Africa with emphasis on the theoretical background to the subject, and the attitudes of employers and public accountants towards the desirability of employee reporting, its form and contents, and public accountant involvement with published employee reports. After analysis, it was concluded: (1) There is a need for employee reporting. (2) Although the average response provided support for a separate employee report issued annually as the most desirable form of employee reporting, employers preferred regular meetings as the form of employee reporting. (3) Public accountant involvement with published employee reports is undesirable. (4) More research is needed. These conclusions support the following recommendations. (1) SAICA should show support for the disclosures required by The King report on corporate governance. (2) SAICA should re-instate the Employee Report Award. (3) The communication role of employee reporting should be emphasized. (4) There should be no regulatory interference with the form of employee reporting at the moment. / Financial Accounting / D. Comm. (Accounting)

The aim of this thesis is to comparasion the defferences in the reporting of financial inforamtion by the Czech accounting legislation and IFRS. In the theoretical part, the author deals with the main differences in these two accounting systems. In the second part, practical part, the author deals with compare the financial statements of business. In the last part assess I the main differences.

The aim of this work is to analyse the methods of valuation in accounting in accordance with Czech Accounting Legislation and International Financial Reporting Standards. This thesis compares different approaches on the example of the specific accounting entity. The company is called E.ON Czech Republic, s. r. o. The theoretical part of the thesis describes accounting systems and defines some of the international standards. The practical part of the thesis characterizes the accounting entity and describes the found differences. The next point is the subsequent comparison and evaluation.

This master thesis applies to the revenues from the sale of goods and their recognition in accordance with the Czech accounting standards, IAS and US GAAP. Particular chapters contain analysis of chosen problems of merchandise (goods) {--} its definition and pricing, problems of cost and income from the sale. The biggest part of the thesis is deals with the recognition of revenues from the sale of goods. At first were characterised and analysed individual methods of revenues recording, which were usefully completed with a concrete case applied to Czech accounting standards, IAS and US GAAP, with addition of the impact on the trading income of the company.

The main purpose of this diploma thesis is to provide a general overview of the three types of fixed assets financing -- long-term bank loan, capital lease and operating lease; their general description, definition and typology, mainly from the accounting standpoint of view in appliance with the International Financial Reporting Standards. Close attention is also paid to their comparison and outlining their main qualitative and quantitative benefits and disadvantages. The last part of the thesis includes a case study that implements quantitative comparison of the three types of assets financing and their accounting according to the theoretical material contained in the preceding chapters.