Who prepares the financial statements?
The people who prepare the statements may differ from company to company. Usually, the accounting staff prepares them, but others, such as investor relations staff , review the statements and related notes. Regardless of who the preparers are, federal securities laws require publicly-owned companies to follow a set of rules and financial reporting guidelines. Associations – such as the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) , a private organization of accounting professionals, and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) , a U.S. government agency – develop the rules and guidelines. These generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) help ensure that the financial information reported is reliable and consistent in form with the reports all other companies prepare. GAAP also helps safeguard against investor fraud. Although all companies follow common standards and requirements, they report on their financial performance in varied ways. Many decisions – from the statements’ na
