Although converting to International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) is accounting-driven, organizations should realize very early on that it is a multi-faceted business change initiative that has potentially wide-reaching impacts across an organization, particularly regarding IT systems.

While IFRS creates a need for new financial data, calculations and reporting, the IT systems and processes should also be reviewed, modified, reconfigured, or even new systems implemented.

This paper is intended to provide a practical guide on how to resolve the major accounting issues usually encountered during an IFRS conversion project and how they can impact IT systems and processes. This paper is different from previous IFRS/IT papers due to its detailed description of the issues and their impact on IT.