Search

The preparation and evaluation of the prospective financial information represents the abandon of the accounting conservatism, closely linked to the passed, and permits the emergence of new accounting tendencies connected to forecasts, budgets and pro-forma financial statements. In this type of information the objectives the company intends to reach are explicit, which, taking into account their best knowledge and available information, permits to make public what the agents consider will most probably happen. It also allows identifying the level of performance the organisation wants to reach in the development of its activity. The prospective financial information allows therefore reducing the asymmetries of the information between all the stakeholders, and facilitates the release of an auditor's opinion on the continuity of the company, as well as reflects on the third dimension of accounting: the most probable future. The contribution of this study is to synthesize the international literature on this type of information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista de Contabilidade & Controladoria is the property of Revista de Contabilidade & Controladoria RC & C and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of RACE- Revista de Administraçâo, Contabilidade e Economia is the property of Revista de Administracao, Contabeis e Economia-RACE and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The main goal of this paper is to analyze if, in a small capital market such as the Portuguese, the audit expectation gap exits and which are its major components. We have enquired auditors and University accounting and auditing professors regarding several subjects that influence and increase the audit expectation gap. We have also questioned the Portuguese users of financial information regarding their perception of the role of today's auditing, to assay their opinion with studies made in Anglo-Saxon countries. We have reached the conclusion that Portuguese financial statements users' expectations are similar to the ones of bigger capital markets. As a matter of fact, fraud is the main cause for the existence of the audit expectation gap, nevertheless, Portuguese financial statements users also indicate that the actual auditor's report model in Portugal is clearly insufficient to comprehend the objectives and work that auditors have done to reach their conclusions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]