respondents were concerned that the cost of these accounting methods may be higher than the current accounting methods. Overall, the study found mixed applicability of IFRS-SME in Germany (2009).
Joshi & Ramadhan (2002) found that Bahrain SMEs always prepared Balance Sheets, but only prepared Income Statements and Cash Flow Statements 90% and 71% of the time, respectively. Their results show that those SMEs reporting under full IFRS always used the following when preparing financial reports:
- Depreciation Accounting
- Presentation of current assets and liabilities, and
- Inventories.
And that SMEs often, but not always, reported on the following:
- Cash Flow Statement
- Property, plant and equipment
- Revenue recognition
- Related parties
- Contingencies, and
- Events after balance date.
Which suggests that these topics were relevant to SMEs in the study. However, employee benefits and other standards from the IFRS suite were not used (2002).
The IASB listed the simplifications and omissions in IFRS-SME compared with full IFRS as noted in the discussion above (IASB, 2009b). IFRS-SME retains the requirement to prepare a cash flow statement. Reporting changes in equity can be combined with the statement of comprehensive income if the profit or loss is the only change in equity for the period.
Though there is no evidence of the benefit to users of goodwill amortisation, IFRS-SME requires that goodwill (and other indefinite life intangibles) be amortised over 10 years (IASB, 2009a).
The European Financial Reporting Advisory Group (EFRAG) (2010) analysed IFRS-SME against the European Union Accounting Directives. They found several potential differences:
- IFRS-SME prohibition of Extraordinary Items of income or expense