Abstract Any financial statement provides a partial basis for evaluating the results of current operations and current financial position. Financial statements relating to periods of less than one year have the same evaluation and forecasting objectives as annual statements. However they differ in a manner that they are also used by outside investors in forecasting the results that will be shown on the annual statements. But interim statements have never received the professional attention that has been devoted to annual statements. The purpose of this research paper is to explore the objectives of interim reporting and to make a tentative statement of concepts to be applied in the development of interim financial statements. Through this exploration it suggests that the usefulness of published interim income statements in predicting annual profit is likely to be impaired if these statements do not include adjustments for fluctuations in the timing of cost releases and concludes that the management has a responsibility for anticipating in income statements for the first three quarters the annual total of a wide variety of business expenses.
Gordon Shillinglaw (Sat,) studied this question.