
The two fundamental Qualitative characteristics are :
- Relevance
- Faithful Representation
What are fundamental qualitative characteristics?
What are the characteristics of a perfect representation?
What is a complete depiction of a group of assets?
What is predictive financial information?
What is materiality in financial reporting?
What is faithful representation?
Is financial information predictive?
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What are the two fundamental qualitative characteristics of the conceptual framework?
The fundamental qualitative characteristics are relevance and faithful representation. Relevant financial information is capable of making a difference in the decisions made by users.
What are the qualitative characteristics of accounting?
There are six different types of qualitative characteristics of accounting information, including:Relevance. ... Representational faithfulness. ... Verifiability. ... Understandability. ... Comparability. ... Timeliness. ... Extract relevant information. ... Check your information.More items...•
What are the two characteristics of relevant information?
Relevance refers to how helpful the information is for financial decision-making processes. For accounting information to be relevant, it must possess: Confirmatory value – Provides information about past events. Predictive value – Provides predictive power regarding possible future events.
What is the difference between fundamental and enhancing qualitative characteristics?
Relevance and faithful representation are categorized as the fundamental qualitative characteristics of financial reporting information. The enhancing qualitative characteristics on the other hand include understandability, comparability, verifiability and timeliness).
What are the quantitative characteristics of accounting?
This is Expert Verified AnswerRelevance- the information presented should be useful to the users of financial information.Reliability- The information should be obtained from reliable source. ... Understandability- Information must be presented in a manner that situation could be understandable.More items...•
What are the main characteristics of accounting?
Understandability. This implies the expression, with clarity, of accounting information in such a way that it will be understandable to users - who are generally assumed to have a reasonable knowledge of business and economic activities.Relevance. ... Consistency. ... Comparability. ... Reliability. ... Objectivity.
What are the two primary functions of accounting?
The main functions of accounting are to store and analyze financial information and oversee monetary transactions. Accounting is used to prepare financial statements for a company's employees, leaders, and investors.
What are the important characteristics of information?
Characteristics of Good Quality Information (ACCURATE).Accurate. Information should be fair and free from bias. ... Complete. Accuracy of information is just not enough. ... Cost-beneficial. Information should be analysed for its benefits against the cost of obtaining it. ... User-targeted. ... Relevant. ... Authoritative. ... Timely. ... Easy to Use.More items...•
What are the characteristics of data?
5 Characteristics of Data QualityAccuracy.Completeness.Reliability.Relevance.Timeliness.
Which of the fundamental and enhancing qualitative characteristics do you regard as most important for the preparers of financial statements and why?
Enhancing Qualitative Characteristics. Comparability, verifiability, timeliness and understandability are directed to enhance both relevant and faithfully represented financial information. Those characteristics should be maximised both individually and in combination.
What two primary qualitative characteristics make accounting information useful quizlet?
The fundamental qualitative characteristics that make accounting information useful are relevance and faithful representation. Relevant information only has predictive value, confirmatory value, or both. Information that is a faithful representation is characterized as having predictive or confirmatory value.
What is qualitative character?
Definition of qualitative character : a discrete heritable character that has transmitted well-defined limits and is in a simple alternate manner : a typical Mendelian character — compare quantitative character.
What is the most important qualitative characteristics of accounting information according to the Financial Accounting Standards Board?
These limits concerning relevant and credible information are reported also by the general framework of the IASB (International Accounting Standards Board), and according to this framework, in order to be useful, accounting information must possess the superior characteristics of pertinence, reliability and ...
Why do we need to know the qualitative characteristics of financial statements?
The dependence of users' economic decision on financial statements is crucial and if the financial information is not accurate or is not true and fair then users may end up making wrong decisions. Therefore, financial statements need to have certain qualitative characteristics in order to be useful to its users.
Which qualitative characteristics of accounting information requires the use of common unit?
Answer: The qualitative characteristic of accounting that requires the use of a common unit and format of reporting is comparability.
Which of the following is not a qualitative characteristics of accounting information?
Hence, we can conclude that Materiality is not a qualitative characteristic of accounting information.
ACCA FA Notes: B1a. Qualitative characteristics - aCOWtancy
Qualitative Characteristics of Financial Information. For decisions to be made, the information must be relevant to the decision and be clearly presented, stating any assumptions upon which the information is based, so that the user may exercise judgement as appropriate.
Qualitative Characteristics of Financial Reporting - LinkedIn
Qualitative characteristics are the attributes that make financial information useful to users. For Analytical purposes, Qualitative characteristics can be differentiated into Fundamental and ...
AP15A: Enhancing qualitative characteristics in management ... - IFRS
Agenda ref 15A . Management Commentary │ Enhancing qualitative characteristics in management commentary Page 6 of 32 . Comparability . 13. As stated in paragraph 7(a), the staff have identified gaps in current management
The qualitative characteristics of financial information
Created at 10/23/2012 11:53 AM by System Account (GMT) Greenwich Mean Time : Dublin, Edinburgh, Lisbon, London: Last modified at 11/30/2012 11:42 AM by System Account (GMT) Greenwich Mean Time : Dublin, Edinburgh, Lisbon, London
Qualitative Characteristics of Financial Info - Accountingverse
Enhancing Qualitative Characteristics 1. Comparability. Comparable information enables comparisons within the entity and across entities. When comparisons are made within the entity, information is compared from one accounting period to another.For example: income is compared for the years 2019, 2020, and 2021.
Why is qualitative accounting important?
The qualitative characteristics of accounting information are important because they make it easier for both company management and investors to utilize a company’s financial statements to make well-informed decisions.
What is the purpose of comparability?
Comparability is the degree to which accounting standards and policies are consistently applied from one period to another. Financial statements that are comparable, with consistent accounting standards and policies applied throughout each accounting period, enable users to draw insightful conclusions about the trends and performance of the company over time. In addition, comparability also refers to the ability to easily compare a company’s financial statements with those of other companies.
What is representational faithfulness?
Representational faithfulness, also known as reliability, is the extent to which information accurately reflects a company’s resources, obligatory claims, transactions, etc.
When are qualitative characteristics employed?
Qualitative characteristic being employed when companies in the same industry are using the same accounting principles.
What are the characteristics of accounting?
The fundamental qualitative characteristics that make accounting information useful are relevance and verifiability. Relevant information only has predictive value, confirmatory value, or both. Information that is a faithful representation is characterized as having predictive or confirmatory value. Comparability pertains to the reporting of ...
What is verifiability in accounting?
Verifiability is solely an enhancing characteristic for faithful representation. In preparing financial reports, it is assumed that users of the reports have reasonable knowledge of business and economic activities. SFAC No. 8 identifies the qualitative characteristics that make accounting information useful.
What is predictive value?
Predictive value is an ingredient of this fundamental quality of information.
What is the meaning of "comparability"?
Comparability pertains to the reporting of information in a similar manner for different companies as well as a company reporting under the same accounting policies over time.
What are fundamental qualitative characteristics?
Fundamental qualitative characteristics – Qualitative characteristics that financial information must possess to make it useful to the primary users of general purpose financial reports. They are relevance and faithful representation.
What are the characteristics of a perfect representation?
To be a perfectly faithful representation, a depiction would have three characteristics. It would be complete, neutral and free from error. Of course, perfection is seldom, if ever, achievable. The Board’s objective is to maximise those qualities to the extent possible A complete depiction includes all information necessary for a user to understand the phenomenon being depicted, including all necessary descriptions and explanations.
What is a complete depiction of a group of assets?
For example, a complete depiction of a group of assets would include, at a minimum, a description of the nature of the assets in the group, a numerical depiction of all of the assets in the group, and a description of what the numerical depiction represents (for example, historical cost or fair value). For some items, a complete depiction may also entail explanations of significant facts about the quality and nature of the items, factors and circumstances that might affect their quality and nature, and the process used to determine the numerical depiction. Fundamental qualitative characteristics
What is predictive financial information?
Financial information with predictive value is employed by users in making their own predictions. Financial information has confirmatory value if it provides feedback about (confirms or changes) previous evaluations.
What is materiality in financial reporting?
In other words, materiality is an entity-specific aspect of relevance based on the nature or magnitude, or both, of the items to which the information relates in the context of an individual entity’s financial report.
What is faithful representation?
Faithful representation. Financial reports represent economic phenomena in words and numbers. To be useful, financial information must not only represent relevant phenomena, but it must also faithfully represent the substance of the phenomena that it purports to represent. In many circumstances, the substance of an economic phenomenon ...
Is financial information predictive?
Financial information is capable of making a difference in decisions if it has predictive value, confirmatory value or both. Financial information has predictive value if it can be used as an input to processes employed by users to predict future outcomes. Financial information need not be a prediction or forecast to have predictive value. Fundamental qualitative characteristics

Fundamental (Primary) Qualitative Characteristics
Enhancing (Secondary) Qualitative Characteristics
- Qualitative characteristics of accounting information that impact how useful the information is: 1. Verifiability 2. Timeliness 3. Understandability 4. Comparability We will look at each qualitative characteristic in more detail below.
Relevance
- Relevance refers to how helpful the information is for financial decision-making processes. For accounting information to be relevant, it must possess: 1. Confirmatory value – Provides information about past events 2. Predictive value – Provides predictive power regarding possible future events Therefore, accounting information is relevant if it can provide helpful information a…
Representational Faithfulness
- Representational faithfulness, also known as reliability, is the extent to which information accurately reflects a company’s resources, obligatory claims, transactions, etc. To help, think of a pictorial depiction of something in real life – how accurately does the picture represent what you see in real life? For accounting information to possess representational faithfulness, it must be: …
Verifiability
- Verifiability is the extent to which information is reproducible given the same data and assumptions. For example, if a company owns equipment worth $1,000 and told an accountant the purchase cost, salvage value, depreciation method, and useful life, the accountant should be able to reproduce the same result. If they cannot, the information is considered not verifiable.
Timeliness
- Timeliness is how quickly information is available to users of accounting information. The less timely (thus resulting in older information), the less useful information is for decision-making. Timeliness matters for accounting information because it competes with other information. For example, if a company issues its financial statements a year after its accounting period, users o…
Understandability
- Understandability is the degree to which information is easily understood. In today’s society, corporate annual reports are in excess of 100 pages, with significant qualitative information. Information that is understandable to the average user of financial statements is highly desirable. It is common for poorly performing companies to use a lot of jargon and difficult phrasing in its …
Comparability
- Comparability is the degree to which accounting standards and policies are consistently applied from one period to another. Financial statements that are comparable, with consistent accounting standards and policies applied throughout each accounting period, enable users to draw insightful conclusions about the trends and performance of the company over time. In addition, comparab…
More Resources
- Thank you for reading CFI’s guide on Qualitative Characteristics of Accounting Information. To keep learning and advancing your career, the following resources will be helpful: 1. Audit Materiality 2. Audited Financial Statements 3. Public Company Filings 4. Financial Accounting Theory