Digitalization and assurance of IFRS financial reports

Dirk Beerbaum (Executive in Residence) will present his paper “Digitalization and assurance of IFRS financial reports". Co-authors are: Keith Duncan (Bond University, Prof. of Accounting and Finance, Department of Accounting, Australia), Ray McNamara (Sunway University, Prof. of Accounting, Department of Accounting, Malaysia) and Seppo Ikäheimo.

Abstract: We investigate if additional customized disclosure increases transparency or opacity for firms from IFRS reporting jurisdictions that adopt digitized financial statement filing. We identify the major data items that require customized extensions (firm specific) with digitized IFRS financial data and the deviations occurring in current implementations of digitalized data (XRBL lodgement). The findings have implications for regulators in determining the form and nature of extensions to allow, practitioners in preparing and coding digitized financial statements, and changes in auditing and the assurance of digitized financial statements.