Nowadays, the accelerated globalisation influences the behaviour of numerous economic
operators; in this connection, it can be certainly said that the globalisation affects
the accounting regulation as well. It can be said about each entity that the awareness
is a sine qua non for the successful operation thereof. To obtain this, both the enterprise
and its environment require a reliable and uniform information system so that the
enterprises can be judged and assessed. This need is met by the accounting of enterprises
which appears in Act C of 2000 on Accounting in Hungary and mainly in the standards
of IFRS and US-GAAP in other countries. The Hungarian and international accounting
rules are divergent from each other on numerous points. There is a criticism of reports
appearing in the Accounting Act that the balance sheet and income statement include
historical data thus the extractable information therefrom is less suitable for possible
rapid interventions. However, its aim is not to do so but to include such information
about the property, financial and profitability situation which are needed for the
owners, investors and creditors in order to present a true and fair view; this is
greatly facilitated by the Notes on the Accounts. The abovementioned criticism does
not necessarily apply to the reports according to IFRS. In nature, the reports similarly
pertain to a specific date i.e. the balance sheet date; however, the report itself
tries to display the vision of the enterprise in several places. In my treatise, I
will highlight a part of the report, namely the Notes on the Accounts, which provide
text information in addition to the numerical data. In the Hungarian system, the Accounting
Act includes the entities` compulsory elements in the Notes on the Accounts while
the structure of IFRS is divergent from this: the disclosure obligations presented
in the Notes on the Accounts relating to the given standard are defined at the end
of each standard. Within this, I will present those mandatory disclosure obligations
related to the balance sheet which are indispensable tools of informing the external
and internal operators adequately.
