- Extractive industries
- Reporting as a lessor in a finance lease, and
- Insurance contracts.
They decided to include fewer accounting options in IFRS-SME, and to require fewer disclosures, they also simplified several areas of reporting (IASB, 2009b; Pacter, 2009). However, there is no supporting evidence given for their decisions.
Another reason given for creating IFRS-SME was to increase the comparability of SME accounts across borders. Nerudova & Bohusova (2008) found that Czech SMEs considered international comparability important. Comparability was considered especially relevant for entities that engaged in cross-border transactions.
They found that users of SME financial reports had a greater interest in
- Short term cash flows
- Liquidity
- Balance Sheet strength, and
- Interest cover.
These qualities, as well as those identified in other studies, should therefore be highlighted in any set of SME financial reporting standards.
As noted previously, the de Mesa Graziano study found that users were more interested in operating data (de Mesa Graziano, 2006).
Adela & Silvia (2009) analysed the comment letters received by the IASB in response to the IFRS-SME exposure draft. They took a sample of the responses and investigated “stakeholder needs”. A limitation of this study is that most comment letters are from account preparers or standard setting bodies, with just a few being from academics. These were the stakeholder groups represented in the sample. They found that respondents:
- preferred historical cost to fair value accounting
- were more concerned with long-term viability of an entity
- thought that short term cash flow information is important
- believed profitability to be important
- wanted accounting options to be limited, and
- wanted limits put on the information to be disclosed.