Preparation of Cash Flow Statement: within accounting system

Usually CFS is prepared at the end of period using income statement and beginning – ending balance sheets. However, we think that also it can be produced independent of balance sheets and income statement using parallel accounts for this purpose, which will be more useful. Since the transactions occurred during period are recorded depending on the accrual basis; we can not prepare a CFS depending on the Adjusted trial balance as we depend for preparation of Balance Sheet & Income Statement. Therefore, we should take the income statement for the period and beginning & ending balance sheets to prepare a CFS for the period. Our view is that it will be useful for managers to receive the CFS directly from the accounting system as we do for other financial statements instead of depending income statement & balance sheet together with some estimation usually needed when we prepare CFS at the end of accounting period. If CFS is to be prepared directly from the accounting system, then it is compulsory to follow a different method for recording the transactions during period. Therefore the starting point of our approach is to develop such a method.

Dr. Ender BOYAR has been a assistant professor in the Vocational School at Fatih University, Istanbul, Turkey since October 2000. He has obtained his PhD degree in Management in 2011. His fields of study are IFRS and behavioral accounting. He is married and has two children.