Accounting manual and policy reviews

Are you considering an accounting manual compilation or review?

Many of our clients seek to improve their processes and documentation to achieve or maintain efficient as well as accurate and reliable financial reporting structures. However, with the increasing complexity of today’s business environment, financial reporting is becoming increasingly challenging.

There may be several reasons for this, such as internal circumstances, changes in business activities or structures such as expansions beyond borders and jurisdictions, and changes in the IT environment.

Significant changes being envisaged in financial reporting standards in many jurisdictions require timely action.

To prevent the quality of your financial reporting from being compromised and to ensure high-quality financial reporting, it is crucial that your organization retains control and transparency over its processes, information used, and requirements to be met in reporting financial results. 

From our experience, an up-to-date, and particularly helpful, and user-friendly accounting manual that reflects all the latest accounting and reporting requirements and beyond can help companies stay on track.

We are ready to help you take your documentation to the next level or create an entirely new guidance from scratch by establishing a compliant, tailored-to-your-needs, user-friendly, meaningful, and helpful accounting manual on a benchmark level.

Martin Stevka

Partner, Head Accounting Advisory Services Corporates

KPMG Switzerland

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Daniel Haas

Partner, Co-Head Accounting Advisory Services Corporates

KPMG Switzerland

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You don’t need just hundreds of pages that nobody uses – you need a meaningful and modern accounting and reporting manual that enhances quality and efficiency by structuring your accounting policy and perhaps even beyond!

Martin Stevka

Head of Accounting Advisory Services Corporates

What needs to be considered prior to an accounting manual and policy review?

Depending on the circumstances, your first priority may be to integrate relevant IFRS guidance on IFRS 16 Leases and IFRS 15 Revenue Recognition into your policies, or perhaps you may be affected by Swiss GAAP FER 30 and its amended guidance for the accounting treatment regarding consolidated financial statements.

Therefore, you should ensure that your accounting records comply with the latest applicable accounting standards.

To this end, it is crucial that you periodically review your accounting manual while simultaneously maintaining it in a comprehensive and user-friendly format that addresses your company’s unique needs.

As such, the following questions assist you in analyzing your situation and may indicate if an accounting manual (update) is your next step toward achieving a high-end financial reporting process.

Business model
- Is your company subject to significant changes in its group complexity, regulatory requirements, or new accounting standards?
- Is your company growing and needs to address and record technically challenging accounting matters?
Governance and structure
- Does your group structure require attention on alignment or transition from other accounting standards to the group’s framework?
- Does your (worldwide) staff understand how (new) accounting standards affect your company’s financial result and how they need to be applied for group reporting reasons?
Staff and know-how
- Do you have (sufficient) know-how within the organization to clearly reflect how your accounting framework affects your daily business?
- Do you have the know-how and sufficient resources available to compile or update your group accounting manual?
Processes
- Do you have robust guidance and processes in place to ensure that accounting and reporting requirements are met?
- Does your current documentation ensure a clear path for the accounting throughout the whole group?
Systems and technology
- Do you have various systems and tools, perhaps in different countries, which may require a central documentation and process description to the worldwide staff to perform the reporting process efficiently?
- Did you implement a new ERP, or do you plan to do so?
Information
- Do you have all vital information available for a successful and efficient preparation (update) of your accounting manual?
- Would you just like to have a meaningful and helpful accounting manual, perhaps including company-specific reporting information, as well as central documentation tailored to your needs?

Our contribution to your fully compliant accounting manual

Analysis and vision: Advice regarding technical and structural revision of the existing sections and suggestions for additions of the latest accounting standards updates. Assessment of potential accounting policy choices.
Content creation: Preparation of the entire accounting manual, certain sections or examples and/or booking entries.
Experience: Support in making your accounting manual more user-friendly by restructuring and reshaping it to the best practice level.
Compliance: Perform financial statements reviews to ensure compliance with disclosure requirements.
Professional approach: Pragmatic and solution-oriented accounting advice and project management.
Communication: Permanent knowledge transfer from our experts to your team and direct communications channels.
Digital solutions: Digital accounting manual solution based on SharePoint technology (upon request).

Your benefits

Meaningful and user-friendly accounting manual tailored to the individual needs and characteristics of your company on a benchmark level.
Assistance with achieving compliance with Swiss GAAP FER, IFRS, or US GAAP accounting and reporting requirements.
Highly skilled resources available for agile project approach allowing your staff to remain focused on daily business activities.
Quick and easy access to a wide range of expert knowledge within the KPMG global network across all subject matters and service.
Improvement of financial knowledge transfer within your organization.

Our approach to accounting manual and policy review

Phase 1: Analysis

Kick-off workshop
Compilation of project plan
Analysis of existing accounting manual or existing guidance
Identification of improvement potential (e.g. new accounting guidance)
Preparation of recommendations
Definition of execution scope

Phase 2: Execution

Detailed analysis of existing sections on compliance with the applicable financial reporting framework
Completeness analysis of the applicable standards
Preparation of content
Continuous exchange between client and KPMG
Optional: Additional topics such as creation of a chart of accounts, account mapping, general reporting topics, process descriptions, illustrative examples
Optional: cross-referencing to interactions with other business functions (e.g. Treasury, Tax, Controlling)