Looking at various new financial reporting models, it is not difficult to find that their goal is to make the accounting information provided by financial reports more useful. So, what are the shortcomings of financial statements?

In the socio-economic environment, the information system that provides decision-making information to all parties in the society according to specific technical means, in the face of the ever-changing accounting environment and the huge impact and challenge it brings, the defects of the existing financial reports are gradually emerging, and how to improve them has always become the focus of theoretical and practical circles.

First, the defects of traditional financial reporting in the new environment

The traditional financial reporting model is the product of industrial economy, and its limitations are increasingly prominent in the new economic environment. The typical performance that the current financial report can't meet the needs of knowledge economy is that some non-financial information, forward-looking information, uncertain information and huge intangible assets of some enterprises with great potential can't be reflected in the financial report, so it can't meet the needs of information users' prediction.

First, focus on reflecting the history of business activities, ignoring the future development prospects of enterprises. The traditional financial report is mainly based on historical cost in measurement attribute, and its task is to provide historical financial information for enterprises, that is? According to the past transactions and events of the enterprise, provide historical images of economic activities and their results in monetary amount? (Ge Jiashu, 2003), because confirmation is based on past transactions, financial information, especially information in financial statements, is mainly oriented to the past.

The user's decision is future-oriented. Although historical information can play a certain role in predicting the future, it is obvious that users can't make decisions based on historical information only, and forward-looking information about the future development prospects of enterprises is becoming more and more important in user decision-making.

Second, pay attention to the confirmation, measurement and reporting of tangible assets and financial assets of enterprises, while ignoring the confirmation, measurement and reporting of intangible assets and intellectual capital of enterprises. The traditional financial report requires that the assets listed in the report must meet the definable, measurable, relevant and reliable recognition standards. Compared with tangible assets, the future economic benefits of intangible assets are more uncertain, more difficult to measure and more difficult to be controlled and owned by enterprises. Therefore, most intangible assets (such as self-created goodwill, human resources, etc.) cannot meet strict recognition standards and are excluded from the statements. As a brand-new capital and production factor, knowledge has entered the process of economic development, and knowledge is wealth. The survival of enterprises and the improvement of economic benefits depend more and more on knowledge and innovation. At this time, the focus of information users is no longer the cash flow of enterprises, but the so-called? Knowledge improvement? .

Third, pay attention to the disclosure of financial information and ignore the disclosure of non-financial information. Traditional financial reports mainly provide financial information, but the financial information is short-term, which cannot explain the dynamics and process of business activities and value creation, and there are serious defects in explaining the long-term value of enterprises.

Good financial indicators do not mean that the operating conditions and long-term development of enterprises are healthy, because enterprises may sacrifice long-term value in exchange for maximizing short-term financial results. To correctly reflect the long-term value of an enterprise, it is not enough to rely solely on financial information, but must rely on non-financial information and non-financial performance indicators to some extent.

Fourth, pay attention to the financial situation and the amount of operating results of enterprises, ignoring the risks and uncertainties faced by enterprises in their business activities. FASB pointed out in the concept announcement 1 that the goal of financial reporting should be? Provide information that helps existing and potential investors, creditors and other users to evaluate the amount, time distribution and uncertainty of the take-home income from the sale, repayment and maturity of securities or loans? Therefore, disclosing the risks and uncertainties faced by enterprises should be one of the main contents of financial reports.

However, the traditional financial report mainly focuses on the disclosure of market risk and credit risk of financial instruments, and lacks effective disclosure of business risk and financial risk faced by enterprises; Formally, the disclosure of risks is scattered in notes, other financial reports and non-financial reports, which cannot reflect the whole picture of risks faced by enterprises to information users.

For some forward-looking and uncertain information, it is excluded from the financial report through some deep-rooted principles, such as historical cost principle, realization principle principle and reliability principle. In the era of knowledge economy, this kind of information is the most important information.

In addition, with the advent of the era of knowledge economy, the life cycle of products has been shortened continuously, and derivative financial instruments have appeared constantly, which makes the production and operation activities of enterprises have great uncertainty. The practice of using regular reports to reflect relevant information in traditional financial reports obviously does not meet the needs of information users and directly affects the quality and usefulness of accounting information disclosure.

In view of the above defects, the quality and usefulness of traditional financial reports are bound to be questioned by the market, and the reporting model that can operate effectively in the industrial economy period began to fail in the knowledge economy period. Because the traditional financial reporting model can't reflect the important information under the new situation, it will inevitably make investors turn to other sources of information, increase the cost and risk of information search, and then affect the effective allocation of social and economic resources.

Second, the direction of improvement of financial reporting

Since 1990s, there has been a wave of improving financial accounting and reporting abroad. Looking at various new financial reporting models, it is not difficult to find that their goal is to make the accounting information provided by financial reports more useful and continuously meet the information needs of information users. Therefore, the author believes that the reform and improvement of financial reports in the future must pay attention to the following aspects.

First, broaden the scope and content of information disclosure in financial reports. In future financial reports, the scope of information disclosure should be expanded, not only financial information but also non-financial information should be disclosed. Should non-financial information, social responsibility information, forecast information, segment information and management accounting information related to information users be included in the disclosure scope? Management analysis report? 、? Social responsibility report? 、? Enterprise division information? 、? Information about managers and shareholders? Wait a minute.

At the same time, what can't be reflected in the current financial statements? Off-balance sheet items? It can also be made public in an appropriate way to fully meet the information needs of information users. However, the information disclosure of financial reports must conform to the principle that benefits outweigh costs, and cannot exceed the objects and responsibilities of financial accounting.

Second, the measurement attribute of future financial accounting should be the system of historical cost, fair value, cost and market price, which is lower. The current financial report is based on the historical cost attribute, so the relevance of the information disclosed in the financial report cannot be fully reflected, especially in the information technology era.

In addition to historical cost attributes, future financial reports should also allow multiple measurement attributes of different projects to coexist, and pay special attention to? Fair value? 、? Which is lower, cost or market price? And other measurement attributes, and promote the information disclosed in financial reports to truly reflect the existence value of enterprises.

Third, future financial reports should achieve a high degree of unity of reliability and relevance. Reliability and relevance are both important quality characteristics of accounting information quality. In order to achieve the useful accounting objectives of decision-making, both are indispensable.

Although they are sometimes contradictory, reliability cannot be sacrificed because of correlation. Reliability is the essential attribute and foundation of financial accounting and the soul of accounting information. No matter how the future financial report is reformed, it will not deviate from the essence of financial accounting, unless the reliability and relevance are highly unified under the condition of comprehensive analysis of the appropriate proportion of the cost and utility of providing information.

Fourth, increase the information of future forecast. For the decision-making of information users, the future information of enterprises is the most relevant. In practice, many countries in the world only require listed companies to provide forecast data of earnings per share.

Compiling a complete forecast financial report is not only technically difficult, but also useless. Because different users look at a company from the perspective of their own interests, they will inevitably get different values because of their different attitudes towards income and risk. In this case, it is not necessary for enterprises to prepare a comprehensive forecast financial report. Therefore, some enterprise futures should be added to future financial reports.

Value trend information, which discloses some information related to predicting the future value of an enterprise in detail as far as possible outside the balance sheet, such as information on the internal conditions and external environment of the enterprise in terms of enterprise investment, product market share, material cost fluctuation, new product development, etc. , so as to provide useful information services for users of financial reports, predict the future value trend of enterprises and improve the overall usefulness of financial reports.

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