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April Workshops to Help SMEs in Mining and Software Sectors Implement IFRS

While many large organizations have rolled out full-scale IFRS projects over the past couple of years, for many smaller companies in sectors such as mining and software, the focus has been on using their limited financial resources for more immediate business needs including, in some cases, business survival. As a result, planning the transition to the new financial reporting standards has taken a back seat until now.

Because Canada's mining and software industries have specific IFRS standards impacting them, and because there are many small to mid-sized organizations in these sectors, CICA's Continuing Education Department is offering special two-day workshops to help these organizations with their transition to IFRS. Fortunately, the transition is not complicated for most of these smaller organizations. It will largely consist of a careful analysis of accounting policies to determine if and how they will change under IFRS. In most cases, there will be limited changes required to IT systems.

The practical industry-specific workshops being offered by CICA will provide a hands-on, granular approach to working through the analysis of the most relevant standards. For example, most software companies will need to look at revenue recognition, assessment of functional currency, and share-based payments while mining companies will focus on standards such as provisions and impairment of assets.

The workshop for the mining industry is being held in Vancouver on April 14-15, 2011, and, for the software industry, the workshop will take place in Toronto on April 27-28. These April dates will provide time for organizations that are venture issuers to meet their first IFRS interim financial report deadline of June 29, 2011.

Moving Down the IFRS Path
By Irene Wiecek, FCA
Accountants and auditors of public companies are gearing up for 2011 but do others need to know IFRS? Do you? The impact of moving to IFRS will be greater than most people think. It will definitely involve resources being invested but it may also affect access to capital, bonuses, information needs and business relationships in general. Accounting information is central to most business transactions and the move to IFRS will serve as a reminder of this centrality.

Different information will need to be captured by the company's information systems, requiring investments to be made in upgrading/changing these systems. Since the financial statements may change under IFRS, this means that key numbers may differ. This in turn may affect things such as debt covenants, employee bonuses, continuous listing requirements and other contractual and business arrangements.

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