The Commitments Statement: A New Statement for Creditors

Abstract

Much has been written lately concerning the failure of several major corporations to report their financial statuses accurately. Enron, Global Crossing, IBM and others have failed to provide accurate information to their investors and to provide full disclosure of liabilities that would influence the valuation. The present paper is focusing on creditors as a main group of accounting information users, which have been neglected, in field of information presentation. To solve this problem we introduce a new financial statement called “the commitments statement”. In the beginning, we point out financial reporting goals and users` informational needs. Then, we mention the issue, which creditors’ informational needs have not been well provided; and the reasons are explained. We continue with inspection of providing information related to solvency and recognition of financial flexibility of entities. Finally, we introduce “the commitments statement” and explain how to provide this statement. We end with the conclusion section.