The subject of this study is the judgments of the accountant/management of the organization regarding the method of recognizing the facts of economic activity and calculating the values of items when preparing financial statements in accordance with the requirements of IFRS. The aim of the study is to form the basic semantic characteristics of the accountant's judgment concept; to identify widely used standards of professional judgment; calculate the coefficients of deviation between EBITDA and cash operating flow, indicating the degree of influence of judgment; identify industries that are characterized by a variance in profitability from operating flow and explain the possible causes of the deviations based on the general characteristics of the operating cycle of companies in the industry. In the process of studying the degree of influence of judgment, methods of logical and quantitative analysis were used. The ratio of operating cash flow and EBITDA for each organization for the periods from 2019 to 2022 was derived, the average value of all ratios within the industry was defined as the deviation coefficient. It has been proven that in certain industries, the influence of judgment is so significant that operating profit poorly reflects the operating cash flow of an organization. Deviation coefficients have been calculated, their use in the analysis of the income statement would help to offset the effect of the accountant's judgment. Calculated deviation coefficients can be used when comparing the profit and loss statements of companies from different industries, when forming conclusions about the financial well-being of the organization. Due to the impossibility of a correlation between the values in the income statement and the operating flow, a conceptual question is raised about the expediency of applying the accountant's judgment in companies of certain industries from a methodological and ethical point of view.
Konstantin YUrievich Lisin (Thu,) studied this question.