CPC 47: New guidance or new interpretation?

Abstract

In 2014, in order to eliminate inconsistencies and weaknesses of the previous rules, the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) and the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) issued IFRS 15 (or Technical Pronouncement CPC 47 for Brazilian companies) - Contract Revenue with Client. Within this context, the objective of this paper was to compare CPC 47 with previous pronouncement, CPC 30 - Revenue, to understand what changes can be identified from the new guidance. After the theoretical analysis of the pronouncements, the research was complemented with the analysis of the financial statements of the companies from Telecommunications, Medicines and Other Products and Aeronautical and Defense Material sectors, in order to verify which adjustments were published by this group of companies under the new guidance justification. Additionally, the topic was discussed through the focus group as a way of capturing the perception of CPC 47 adjustments perceived by specialists from accounting area. For the analysis of the focus group discussion, the NVivo® tool was used to apply the content analysis methodology to minimize possible inferences about the topic discussed. The results showed that the adjustments captured, either via explanatory note or focus group, were mostly in line with the expectations of the theoretical studies. Based on the comparative analysis of the standards, it was concluded that the new standard does not present a relevant change, therefore, the fact the standard be more detailed and/or directive results impacts the companies accounting.