August 2010

Convergence Milestone

From Journal of Accountancy.

Revenue recognition among proposals released as FASB, IASB commit to new timeline.

FASB and the IASB wrapped up the first of three rounds of issuing proposed standards in their final push toward U.S. GAAP-IFRS convergence, even as they gave themselves an extra six months to complete the ambitious project.

In what is potentially their most far-reaching joint proposal to date, the boards unanimously recommended an approach to revenue recognition that would create one standard across all industries and would require greater disclosures, among other changes.

The revenue recognition proposal came a month after FASB issued its own proposal on accounting for financial instruments. The two boards are currently pursuing their own approaches to financial instruments but have pledged to try to reconcile this fall.

The boards consider revenue recognition, financial instruments and two projects closely related to financial instruments—fair value measurement and the presentation of other comprehensive income—to be urgent projects in the larger IFRS-U.S. GAAP convergence effort, and they said they remain committed to completing them by their self-imposed June 2011 deadline.

Full article.