Abstract The interpretation phase of accounting has been receiving an increasing amount of attention in accounting literature in recent years. While it is true that supporting schedules have been advocated for special purposes, the presentation of interpretive data generally has been neglected. The purpose of this article is to examine the problem of developing and presenting such supplementary data for income reports. The nature of an income report must be that of an activity report in which are reflected, in varying degrees of detail, certain of the activities of a business entity. If the conception of the income report as a presentation of data on the activities of a firm is accepted, it is necessary as a part of the underlying analysis of business reporting to establish an agreement on the nature of an activity in the accounting sense, for the term "activity" is an arbitrary term. The inevitable conclusion falls that accountants must provide supplementary data to facilitate estimations of activities under different concepts of income. But there are additional types of supplementary data, which should be provided.
Norton M. Bedford (Tue,) studied this question.