Relevance And Credibility Of The Information From The Financial-Accounting Statements

The relevance of the accounting information is one of the most significant features in terms of quality and refers to its capacity to influence investors, creditors and other users of the financial statements in their decision-making. A relevant piece of information helps the user assessing present, future and past events, confirming and correcting potential past errors. The information’s relevance regarding a certain element which must be acknowledged in financial statements, may not be assessed distinctly, but it must be assessed within the frame of the main objective of the financial statement, namely to provide useful information for decision-making with respect to investments, financing or exploitation. Moreover, the relevance must be taken into account within the frame of the drafting of the entire set of the financial statements and the way according to which an acknowledged element is useful in the decision-making process. The credibility assumes that the accounting information does not comprise any significant error or subjectivism and it offers a faithful image of the mirrored phenomena or processes. The conceptual frames detail the elements which ensure the information’s credibility equally in terms of content, but underlined in terms of wording. Thus, the accounting information must be objective (to faithfully mirror the transactions and events), must reflect the meaning and consequences of the economic events just as the legal requirements, it has to be neutral (to avoid influencing a decision or issuing a judgment for the accomplishment of a pre-determined outcome or objective), it must be complete and illustrated within the limits of cautiousness. Subsequently the perusal of the argument for the two classes of opinions, we conclude that the information provided in the financial statements must be believable enough and relevant enough at the same time. Thus, the result of the display in the financial statement must comply with the cross point of these two features.