The way your company performs accounting research is about to change. On June 3, 2009, the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) approved the FASB Accounting Standards Codification™ (ASC) effective for financial statements for interim or annual reporting periods ending after September 15, 2009. The FASB ASC will officially launch on July 1, 2009.

At this time the ASC will officially become the single source of authoritative nongovernmental U.S. generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP), superseding existing FASB, American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA), Emerging Issues Task Force (EITF), and related literature. All other non SEC literature not included in the ASC will be considered non-authoritative. The ASC does not change current GAAP, it simply reorganizes the existing pronouncements into approximately 90 topics.

The ASC will transform the way your organization does research and how you reference accounting literature in your accounting polices and financial statements. It is expected to simplify user access to GAAP by providing all authoritative literature about a particular topic in one location.

Some of the changes you can expect with the ASC are as follows:

• Reduction in the amount of time and effort required to research an accounting issue by providing everything related to an issue in one place.
• Less risk of noncompliance by improving the usability of the accounting literature.
• References to GAAP now consist of numbers used in the ASC’s structural organization.
• As new standards are issued they will update the ASC.

How do you get ready for this change?

• Familiarize yourself with the changes now. A free online tutorial is available on the ASC website at asc.fasb.org.
• Get your team on board by ensuring they are aware of the changes and understand the new system.
• Consider how these changes will affect your accounting policies and financial reporting.

If you have questions regarding FASB ASC or how these changes affect your organization, please contact Karyn Lowrey, Partner, at 671-741-2541 or klowrey@bspj.com.