Inventories and prepaid expenses present some additional valuation issues, With the emphasis on net income reporting, the inventory valuation process has become secondary to the matching of expired inventory costs to sales. The use of any of the acceptable inventory flow assumption techniques (e.g., LIFO, FIFO, weighted average discussed in Chapter 8) prescribes the amount that remains on the balance sheet, and each of these How assumptions likely will result in different inventory valuations in fluctuating market conditions. In addition, the accounting convention of conservatism has required in the requirement that a lower of cost or market valuation be used for inventories. In any case, the financial statement user should interpret the inventory figure as being less than its estimated selling price.