Perhaps in response to slow adoption of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) among private companies, a new “quick guide” has been issued that condenses the standards to 230 pages or less.  That stands in stark contrast to the full complement of public company guidance, which comes in at nearly ten times that length.

IFRS isn’t yet mandated for public entities but it is already available and encouraged for private companies.  According to a recent article in CFO Magazine, Private Companies Get IFRS Made Easy, the abridged version leads to simplified measures that may take a good deal of unnecessary pain away from financial statement preparers in these organizations:

Notably, various accounting-policy options in full IFRS are replaced by simpler methods. For example, several options for financial instruments — including available-for-sale, held-to-maturity, and certain fair-value options — aren’t included in the pared-down standard. Neither is the revaluation model for property, plant, and equipment and for intangible assets. For investment property, the accounting is driven by circumstances rather than choosing between the cost and fair-value methods.