Documentation or Evidentiality? (On the Issue of the Basic Principle of Ensuring the Quality of Accounting Information)

• Main Author: Bezruchuk Svіtlana L.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Research Centre of Industrial Problems of Development of NAS of Ukraine 2019-10-01
• Series: Bìznes Inform
• Subjects: documentation; primary document; principle of evidentiality; principle of documentation
• Online Access: https://www.business-inform.net/export_pdf/business-inform-2019-10_0-pages-172_177.pdf

Accountance as a process begins with identifying, measuring and recording facts, actions and events in order to obtain information about economic operations. Continuous and uninterrupted monitoring of all economic operations at the enterprise is carried out through documentation - one of the main methods of accountance, which at the same time serves as the information basis of accountance, its evidence base. Despite extensive research on this issue, accounting requirements are changing today, and new approaches are emerging to substantiate the basic principles and approaches of accounting, including documentation. Documentation is defined either as a principle, or as a requirement, or as a rule of accountance (scientists did not come to a consensus). Another position consists is that the documents being the main, but not the only evidence, confirming implementation of a economic operation. This position is proved by world practice, in particular the norms adopted in the Polish legislation on accounting. Therefore, scholars began to talk increasingly about the principle of evidentiality in accountance, rather than documentation. The article highlights an attempt to separate concepts such as «principle» and «rule»; documentation is defined as the basic rule of accountance. It cannot be a principle upon the reason that it is defined as the process of recording economic facts in documents. It is pointed out that the principle of evidentiality should be enshrined at the legislative level, because at the present stage of the development of accounting the basis is not directly a documentary form, but the evidentiality of those economic operations, facts or economic events that occur in the enterprise and must be recorded in the accounting. This will improve the quality of the accounting information provided to interested users.