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Various adjustments to historical cost are used, many of which require the use of management judgment and may be difficult to verify. The trend in most accounting standards is towards more timely reflection of the fair or market value of some assets and liabilities, although the historical cost principle remains in use.
Historical cost principle: requires companies to account and report assets' and liabilities' acquisition costs rather than fair market value. This principle provides information that is reliable (removing opportunity to provide subjective and potentially biased market values), but not very relevant. Thus there is a trend to use fair values.
In accounting, the cost principle is part of the generally accepted accounting principles. Assets should always be recorded at their cost, when the asset is new and also for the life of the asset. Assets should always be recorded at their cost, when the asset is new and also for the life of the asset.
An important part of standard cost accounting is a variance analysis, which breaks down the variation between actual cost and standard costs into various components (volume variation, material cost variation, labor cost variation, etc.) so managers can understand why costs were different from what was planned and take appropriate action to ...
IAS 1 sets out the purpose of financial statements as the provision of useful information on the financial position, financial performance and cash flows of an entity, and categorizes the information provided into assets, liabilities, income and expenses, contributions by and distribution to owners, and cash flows.
a) Historical cost principle (Kieso, Weygandt and Warfield)p38 – the only time this principle reflects cost is at the initial time of purchase or acquisition. In subsequent periods, the historical cost along with taxation-driven depreciation methods does not help managers determine their current operational cost factors.
In theory, this price pressure should balance market prices to accurately represent the "fair value" of a particular asset. Purchasers of distressed assets should buy undervalued securities, thus increasing prices, allowing other Companies to consequently mark up their similar holdings. Also new in FAS 157 is the idea of nonperformance risk.
In accounting, fair value is a rational and unbiased estimate of the potential market price of a good, service, or asset. The derivation takes into account such objective factors as the costs associated with production or replacement, market conditions and matters of supply and demand.