Audit Report Opinion

Discuss about the Corporate Accounting for IFRS Reporting.

The board of directors of Westfarmers Limited includes nine independent directors. Richard Goyder AO is the managing director of the company, Terry Brown is the finance director, Paul Bassat is the non-executive director of the company, James Graham AM is the non-executive director and is a member of remuneration and nomination committee (Wesfarmers.com.au., 2016). Jennifer Westacott is the non-executive director of the company and a member of audit and risk committee.

Subsidiaries and Associates Information

Westfarmers Limited has subsidiaries spread across Australia and in the foreign nations. The Australian subsidiaries of the company include BBC Hardware, Coles Group Superannuation Fund and Coles Property Management. Foreign subsidiary of the company includes Fosseys and Toorangaa Shopping Centre (Ball 2016).

Borrowing Costs and Estimated Interest

The borrowing cost of Westfarmers Ltd is observed to be $m 283 in the year 2015 and $m 288 that increased in the year 2016. Moreover, interests of the company was observed to be $m1102 in the year 2015 that decreased to $m 1009 in the year 2016 (Wesfarmers.com.au., 2016).

Westfarmer’s Ltd’s time of signing the audir report was on 30 June 2016. The auditor “Eranst and Young” conducted the audit of the Westfarmers Limited. From the annual report it is clarified that according the opinion of the audit committee of the company it was ensured that offering a true and fair view of the company’s financial position and its performance over the year (Barbu et al. 2014). In the opinion of the auditors, it was also ensured that the financial report of the Westfarmers Limited is complied with accounting standards and corporations regulations.

Employees

In the year 2016, Westfarmers Limited is recorded to have 205,000 employees and has positioned itself as the largest private employed within Australia (Christensen et al. 2013).

The method of comprehensive income of Westfarmers Limited is under the compliance of FASB 130. The method suggests that the comprehensive income statement of the company should follow the format mentioned under FASB 130 (Ball et al. 2013). Moreover, the subtotals of operating profit within comprehensive income will be prohibited and their subtotals of other amounts must be displayed on the income statement.

From the assessment of the financial information, it was gathered that the director declared the financial statement complied with Australian accounting standards. It is deemed that such declaration has been made after gaining a declaration needed to be made to the directors in compliance with section 295A of the 2001 corporations act (Soderstrom and Sun 2014).

Reporting Method of Comprehensive Income

Finance lease means a method, which a company selects while acquiring any asset or equipment. In other words, it is an agreement in between the lesser and lessee where the lesser acquires the payment of lease to meet its ownership cost of an asset (Barbu et al. 2014). It is the duty of a lesser to clear the tax and other expenses related to the lease of an asset.

Based on following benefits the consultant advice the company WestFarmer’s Ltd to select Finance Leases 200 instead of Operating Lease:

It helps in maintaining the steady cash flow of the company by reducing the cash payments. It helps the company to choose the best quality of the assets. During course of lease of an asset, the possession of the asset lies with the lesser so the company can select those assets, which are affordable by them. It helps in reducing the burden of tax by providing the benefit of deduction from tax regimes because expenditure related to lease are deducted from the total income of a person or an entity. It helps the company to reduce its capital expenses. The company gets a brief idea about its purchase and sell of an asset, which helps the company to use its capital fund accordingly. Moreover, the company can also plan its expenditure while forecasting its budget for the year (Fitó et al. 2013).

There are certain disadvantages of Financial Lease Agreements300, which are as follows:

These types of transactions are regarded as expenditure instead of payment. Therefore, it affects the income statement of a company and increases the liability of the company. In case where the assets are not in use the payment of lease becomes a burden for an individual. For example, if a person leases a house for a period of 12 months during the course he was staying outside the country for some purpose (Barbu et al. 2014). In this case, the person does not feel like paying the lease. Since, the lesser of the asset is responsible for repairing and maintaining the assets. He has to bear all the expenses related to the asset in case of any damage or loss. In this case, it becomes difficult for a person to find whether the asset was damaged at the time of lease or not. In the opinion of the Practical Accountancy Loose Leaf financial lease increases the value of an asset in return it reduces the return on asset ratio. Therefore, it becomes difficult for a company to calculate the actual value of an asset and overburden the lesser by the payment of depreciation and interest on the asset (Picker  et al. 2013).

Director’s Declaration and Evaluation of Company’s Financial Wellbeing

There are constructive differences between new accounting standard for leases under IFSR 16 and the recent accounting standard from the viewpoint of both lessee and leaser. Lessee accounting has substantially modified, however very less changes took place for leaser. IFRS 16 defines leases as application guidance for supporting companies in making assessments. The new accounting standards under IFRS 16 will not include scope of several service contracts that was deemed leases through applying IAS 17 (Wesfarmers.com.au., 2016). The major differences are associated with the difference that is related with the treatment of residual value guarantees offered by leaser or lessee. There are certain implications of such leases for the banks and shareholders and several users of Oliver Ltd. The lease agreements those have vital implications for balance sheet, cash flow statement and income statements have increased detrimental impact on the shareholders equity.

Lease is considered as the acquisition of the assets both fixed and movable but for a certain time in exchange of certain rent. As per the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) 16, lease is the contract between the leaser and the lessee where the later uses the assets period in exchange of certain consideration. However, the main factor of change is that the lease and service are not treated equally and later is not reported on the balance sheet. Moreover, it also eliminates the classification whether the lease is operating or financial (Wesfarmers.com.au., 2016). Hence, as per IAS 17, leases are either shown as lease payment in lease assets account or are combined with the property, plant and equipment.

In case of Wesfarmers, they have leased assets in all their businesses and recorded them as operating lease. This company has recognized the leases within their property, plant and equipment where they depreciate and amortize the leasehold premises and assets. On the other hand, Fairfax Media also classified it as operating lease and operating but they recorded it as borrowing cost. Hence, leasehold buildings are shown in separate account in order to make clear understanding and maintain transparency of the report.

As per the new and revised standards of recording the lease, it increases the effectiveness of financial reports and makes the viewer clear about the same. Hence, including the leases in the financial report will provide the true value of the advantage that the company is using against its assets. It is so because keeping the lease materials off balance sheet does not derive the company’s true assets and liabilities. This change has been made in order to make the stakeholders fully aware of the company’s position as the companies such as Wesfarmers and Fairfax Media are very much dependent on the leased assets.  

Consultant Advice of Preferring Operating to Finance Leases

This step has been taken after a very careful consideration after IFRS held several meeting with the members of IASB and FASB. In this case, the leases are recognized as either assets or liabilities and are measured at the present value of future payment for the lease. Hence, they are to be recognized in balance sheet especially if they are long-term lease. It would provide the idea about the company’s debt (Wesfarmers.com.au., 2016).

As seen in the case of both the companies, they complied with the standards and regulations of the IFRS but needs to change a few things such as avoiding classification of the category of lease. Both the company could further use the same pattern of reporting in order to make the shareholders understand the report in a better way.

The consolidated financial statements are those statements, which represent the financial statement of the holding company and its subsidiaries. In other words, it presents the actual scenario of the company’s financial position in the market during the year. The main users of financial statement are the investors, lenders, employees, and so on. The basic consideration of the users while preparing the consolidated financial statements is:

The entity prepares the statement in order to get a brief idea about the accounting policies of the company (Ball 2016). The entities are not required to prepare consolidated financial statement if it is a wholly owned company and its subsidiaries did not have the right to vote in the meeting of the company or if its debt are not traded in the market. Furthermore, if the company does not file its financial statement to the authorities than also the company need not require preparing its financial statement. The main idea behind this is that the company presents the actual position of the company in the market so that the users i.e. the stakeholders and the other investors can get a fair idea about the company’s financial position before investing their funds (Leo et al. 2012).

The difference between the financial statements from classifications of non-controlling interest is as follows:

Consolidated financial statements include all the assets and liabilities whether holding or subsidiary of the company whereas in case of non-controlling interest the entity presents it separately from assets and liabilities (Ball 2016).

In case of consolidated financial statement, the company eliminates the carrying value of an asset by dividing the value into its subsidiaries. Whereas, in case of non-controlling interest, the reporting company provides the income statement to the management of the company. These divisions are distributed based on the share of holdings of the company.

Disadvantages of Company’s Financial Lease Agreements

Consolidated financial statement reduces the liability of cash flows and income related in between the subsidiaries and holding of the company. It provides the up to date detail of each transaction, whereas, in case of non-controlling interest the reporting company provides the net income of the management of the company whether the company is in deficit or not it will provide the whole detail of the income of the company (Wahlen et al. 2014).

It is important to classify equity to ascertain the actual value of assets and liabilities. It includes various sub heads based on which the company can calculate its income for the year. The most common examples are current asset, current liabilities, long-term debt, and so on. The company records all the transactions, which occurred during the year under this sub-heads (Ball 2016). AASB 10 provides the investor with detailed information regarding the control of their equity in the market. This is essential for the investee to get exposure of the returns in the market. It controls the skill of investor’s return, which ultimately affects its investment.

In other words, it defines the investor’s holding in the company. The basic requirement of AASB 10 is based on principal amount. Few organizations, which were earlier, treated as an entity may be affected with this amendment. Therefore, it motivates the auditors to discuss the financial statement with their clients before preparing it (Aghaei et al. 2014). Hence, after discussing the matter it can be said that the company must classify its equity before presenting its financial statement in the market to maintain its market potential.

Reference List

Aghaei, A., Ansari, Z. and Maleki, S., 2014. Using outlier detection for classification of analysts’ equity. Advances in Environmental Biology, pp.41-44.

Ball, R., 2016. International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS): pros and cons for investors. Accounting and business research, 36(sup1), pp.5-27.

Ball, R., Li, X. and Shivakumar, L., 2013. Mandatory IFRS adoption, fair value accounting and accounting information in debt contracts. Fair Value Accounting and Accounting Information in Debt Contracts (September 11, 2013).

Barbu, E.M., Dumontier, P., Feleaga, N. and Feleaga, L., 2014. A proposal of an international environmental reporting grid: What interest for policymakers, regulatory bodies, companies, and researchers?: Reply to discussion of “mandatory environmental disclosures by companies complying with IAS/IFRS: The Case of France, Germany and the UK”. The International Journal of Accounting, 49(2), pp.253-262.

Christensen, H.B., Hail, L. and Leuz, C., 2013. Mandatory IFRS reporting and changes in enforcement. Journal of Accounting and Economics, 56(2), pp.147-177.

Fitó, M.À., Moya, S. and Orgaz, N., 2013. Considering the effects of operating lease capitalization on key financial ratios. Spanish Journal of Finance and Accounting/Revista Española de Financiación y Contabilidad,42(159), pp.341-369.

Leo, K.J., Hoggett, J. and Sweeting, J., 2012. Company Accounting, Google eBook. John Wiley & Sons.

Picker, R., Leo, K., Loftus, J., Wise, V.J., Clark, K. and Alfredson, K., 2013.Applying international financial reporting standards. Milton: Wiley.

Schäfer, W.L., Boerma, W.G., Kringos, D.S., Ryck, E.D., Greß, S., Heinemann, S., Murante, A.M., Rotar-Pavlic, D., Schellevis, F.G., Seghieri, C. and Van den Berg, M.J., 2013. Measures of quality, costs and equity in primary health care instruments developed to analyse and compare primary care in 35 countries. Quality in Primary Care, 21(2), pp.67-79.

Soderstrom, N.S. and Sun, K.J., 2014. IFRS adoption and accounting quality: a review. European Accounting Review, 16(4), pp.675-702.

Wahlen, J.M., Baginski, S.P. and Bradshaw, M., 2014. Financial reporting, financial statement analysis and valuation. Nelson Education.

Wesfarmers.com.au., 2016. Home. [online] Available at: https://www.wesfarmers.com.au [Accessed 27 Sep. 2016].