Accounting Concepts and Principles are a set of broad conventions that have been devised to provide a basic framework for financial reporting. As financial reporting involves significant professional judgments by accountants, these concepts and principles ensure that the users of financial information are not mislead by the adoption of accounting policies and practices that go against the spirit of the accountancy profession. Accountants must therefore actively consider whether the accounting treatments adopted are consistent with the accounting concepts and principles.
In order to ensure application of the accounting concepts and principles, major accounting standard-setting bodies have incorporated them into their reporting frameworks such as the IASB Framework.
Following is a list of the major accounting concepts and principles:
- Relevance
- Reliability
- Matching Concept
- Timeliness
- Neutrality
- Faithful Representation
- Prudence
- Completeness
- Single Economic Entity Concept
- Money Measurement Concept
- Comparability/Consistency
- Understandability
- Materiality
- Going Concern
- Accruals
- Business Entity
- Substance over Form
- Realization Concept
- Duality Concept
- Historical Cost
- Verifiability Concept
In case where application of one accounting concept or principle leads to a conflict with another accounting concept or principle, accountants must consider what is best for the users of the financial information. An example of such a case would be the trade off between relevance and reliability. Information is more relevant if it is disclosed timely. However, it may take more time to gather reliable information. Whether reliability of information may be compromised to ensure relevance of information is a matter of judgment that ought to be considered in the interest of the users of the financial information.
