FASB is coming up on the launch of its “codification” effort, as it streamlines rules into more of a single-source organization.  The initiative is designed to make guidelines more navigable, and while it will make things easier in the long run there undoubtedly will be some short term pain.

As CFO magazine points out in their recent piece on the new FASB Code:

The debut of the online filing cabinet promises to streamline GAAP by grouping all rules into roughly 90 topics, and should draw a sharper distinction between authoritative and non-authoritative GAAP. However, less than three weeks away from the launch, there are still many unknowns, including whether or not the FASB’s promise that GAAP is not changing will turn out to be true.

With questions still swirling, MFA invites those trying to get ahead of the issue to download more background on the FASB accounting standards codification or for a higher level look, register for this week’s webinar on the purpose of the new codification and the best way to make the transition.

No surprise to see that the saga around IFRS (International Financial Reporting Standards) lives on.  New SEC Chair Mary Schapiro implied that recent discussions may be wiped from the chalkboard (or at least significantly reconsidered), saying that she “will not necessarily feel bound by the existing roadmap that’s out for comment.”

As noted in the AICPA’s blog on IFRS, any delay is welcome when it comes to preparing for such a major change in standards.  As I discussed in my post on September 3 or last year, I had my own take on the situation and predicted that the existing timetable would not persist.   A shift of such enormous scope will take a great deal of patience and learning on the front end,  and it will not be easily accepted in the financial matrix of the United States.

Even so, we stand by our take in last year’s Perspectives article (Three Steps Financial Executives Should Take Towards IFRS) that getting that learning process underway can only help matters in the long run.  In that Perspetivce, we point to three key steps financial departments can take even this far away from implementation:  keep your radar on, get educated, and prepare to mobilize.  When the tide does eventually rise on IFRS, it will come with a litany of obstacles - but with all this back and forth, getting caught off guard shouldn’t be one of them.

The SEC voted yesterday to make XBRL the official standard for communicating business and financial information.  As XBRL Blog Magazine reports, the mandate comes out of a roundtable held by the SEC, and might require compliance for companies reporting as early as June 2009.

We noted over the summer in a post on XBRL that in a June survey by Compliance Week, 55% of 236 financial reporting executives had started researching XBRL or were not aware of the subject at all, and less than 20% of respondents had anybody on staff considered to be an XBRL expert.  This SEC mandate will demand a short learning curve for the first half of 2009; the transition might be challenging but the payoff will be considerable.  As we wrote in that earlier post, “Long-term benefits are likely to be realized by those businesses that are willing and able to embrace the technological change that XBRL will bring about, such as easier and faster access to competitive information and knowledge.”