I work for the UK and Irish part of a multi-national and we prepare about 60 sets of financial statements under IFRS, all with a December year-end.
For 2012 we will continue to prepare full IFRS accounts using a mixture of Iris Accounts Production and Word, with iXBRL tagging using Datatracks.
For 2013, there are significant benefits to preparing accounts under FRS101, with the avoidance of the related party, financial instruments and cashflow reporting.
Unfortunately, Iris tell us that they will not be ready to present under FRS101, indeed my conversation with them was that they had no plans to look at it this year because the implementation date wasn’t until 2015.
When coupled with the problems we have with Iris disclosures, I’m now looking at other alternatives.
We can’t link to our ERP systems because there are too many different versions within our companies. Also, we don’t produce the group accounts in the UK so there is no business case for a significant project implementation. However, the auditors can’t prepare the accounts because of the French audit independence rules.
Before implementing Iris we looked at Sage Accounts Production, Caseware and a couple of other options.
I am therefore looking for an accounts production system that can take data from Excel, prepare accounts using FRS101 under UK and Irish company law and submit iXBRL accounts to HMRC and to the Irish government.
We don’t need tax or company secretarial software – those are adequately covered by other functions within the business.
Does anyone have any suggestions for alternative accounts production software?
Thanks
Peter Bonner
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Replies (7)
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have you looked at Digita?
i note that KPMG also have what looks like a tagging solution , tho i have not investigated it.
are Keytime irish based , tho it may be beyond them - i think at mom you may be an ask too far
Thanks for these suggestions.
I can't see any reference to FRS101 on the Digita website, but at least they do IFRS. I'll talk with the sales team there.
Keytime only advertise small limited companies (and ours are anything but) although the accounts plus software might work. I think it'd depend if we chose to go bespoke, and I was hoping we'd find a nice solution out there that someone else has already developed.
KPMG are actually our auditors so I'll talk with someone next week when they're out.
Iris
Hi
At the outset I think it is important to emphasise that I have no affiliation with Iris - but we do use their product in our practice and I have been in conversations with Iris about FRS 101/102 issues quite extensively.
I've been lecturing around the country on FRS 102 issues for the last couple of months and given that Iris is used by the majority of practitioners I asked their product manager directly about the conversion aspect to relay to practitioners in lectures as clearly some practitioners will need to early adopt to take advantage of the reduced disclosured framework contained in FRS 101. I do believe they are currently working on FRS 101/102 aspects and that this may take a little while given that FRS 102 was only issued as a definitive standard in March this year. It may be that their support team may have told you incorrectly but as we also use Iris, I felt clarification was needed so be assured that they will be able to cope with FRS 101/102 well before the 2015 'official' implementation date.
Regards
Steve
No model accounts
In defence of Iris, CaseWare, Sage and all other vendors. Every vendor I am sure is working on FRS102/101 they would be fools not too. However, whilst the standards may have been released no model accounts exist and more importantly no taxonomies exist for these standards either. No vendor is going to have these in the very short term, the development teams need time to turn standards into actual accounting formats.
Those considering early adoption should factor in not only whether they will be able to produce accounts but will they be able to tag them for iXBRL.
At CaseWare, we have been producing IFRS accounts for very complex entities for many years, those seeking full IFRS should not be concerned.
No guidance
HMRC have confirmed that FRS 101 accounts should be tagged using the IFRS taxonomy in the interim. However there does not seem to be any guidance on how notes to the accounts under IFRS should tie into a Companies Act balance sheet and profit and loss account.
No guidance
Interim solutions are a nightmare for software developers as our customers expect automation wherever possible. As you have rightly pointed out guidance on exactly what to tag is currently very sparse. Our customers would also quite rightly expect any "interim" solution to upgrade to the actual solution in due course. This is just a waste of development resource, when we have better things to do!
Our current advice to anyone considering early adoption is to think very carefuly and to factor in manual tagging. When discussing this with a top 4 firm they described anyone deciding to adopt early as "brave".
I am sure the industry will in time roll-out automated templates in plenty of time for the deadlines.
Infor SunSystems is configurable how you want ...
... is multi currency, multi lingual, and can report in multiple structures from any one business unit (company).
So you could have the French standard chart of accounts while reporting in IFRS, FRS101 and US GAP - for example.
Taking feeds from Excel is normal and there is an iXBRL solution.
If you are interested in looking at this in more detail contact me through a PM and we can set something up.
Regards
Steve